Must Be A Bad Connection
by MillyVeil
Summary: How do you cope when your ability to communicate is taken away? When words become meaningless and voices become painful. When everyone turn into strangers? Clint gets to find out, and the answer is 'not well'. [Clint, Natasha, aphasia, angst, friendship turning into tentative relationship]
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

Hydra. Of course it was fucking Hydra.

Sweat stings Clint's eyes, but he ignores it and delivers a left jab to the training dummy, follows it up with a sharp roundhouse kick to its head. He returns to a neutral stance and shakes out his arms. He's been at it for close to two hours and he's starting to feel it. He's not ready to quit, though, the corrosive frustration still simmers dangerously in him. He could ask to spar with Natasha, working out with her usually helps, but right now company is not what he needs.

What he needs is to kick the everloving shit out of this training dummy.

Breathe. Right jab, low side-kick, back to neutral. Breathe. Attack again.

The door to the gym swooshes open behind him. The reflection in the glass wall shows Natasha making her slow way across the floor towards him. He can just about hear her footsteps against the floor, but he does hear them, and that means she's deliberately making noise. His jaw starts to ache and he realizes he's clenching his teeth. He forces himself to relax, shakes his shoulders out, but God, that chafes. He's not some damn head case that will flip his shit at the smallest thing. He attacks again, rounds it up up by getting in close and personal and rams a knee into the side of the dummy before retreating out of range.

His water bottle appears in front of him. He snatches it from her hand, takes a drink, then tosses it back to the floor and focuses on the dummy again. He really has no interest in engaging with her right now. She rounds him, visibly unimpressed with his mood, and settles into a fighting stance. Her body language clearly tells him it isn't an invitation, so he lowers his guard and takes a step back to give her space. She slowly goes through his last combo. She stops smoothly in mid-motion, perfectly balanced, and angles her raised knee exaggeratedly to the right.

"Yeah, yeah, my form is shit, I know," he huffs. Frustration has a way to let force overshadow technique and discipline.

Natasha fetches his towel and nods curtly towards the locker rooms. Time to quit, apparently. Well, tough luck, Clint is a big boy, he can decide on his own when he's had enough. He angles his body away from her and gets back into his neutral stance again. She puts her hand on his arm. He shakes it off. Why the hell does everyone think he needs to be told what to do? He hits the dummy with a fast one-two jab. She blows out an exasperated noise and he sees out of the corner of his eye how she retreats to the wall and sits down on the floor. Apparently she's staying. He shrugs mentally. If she wants to waste her time, it's her choice.

He hears the door open again, and this time the tread is heavier. Steve. Clint hears him say something to Natasha and she answers. She sounds frustrated. Walk a mile in my shoes, he thinks darkly, then you'll know true frustration.

Steve circles him, waves his hand as if trying to get Clint's attention.

Oh, for fuck sake.

"You know, I _can_ hear you coming," he snaps.

Steve winces, then he takes a deliberately deep breath and starts to speak.

It's gibberish.

Record-played-backwards gibberish. With a side of nails on blackboard.

Clint grits his teeth at the sound. He can hear from the pitch that it's a question, and it doesn't take a genius to figure out what it is. It's the question every single person has asked him every single day for the past eight days. _Do you understand me?_

He looks away, shakes his head curtly. No. He still can't understand a word Steve says. The same way he can't understand Natasha. Or Tony. Or JARVIS. Or Fury. Or _anyone_.

Clint had woken up in the back of the jet after a raid on what had turned out to be a Hydra lab, and the team had all been speaking nonsense. Total nonsense. When he'd demanded they stop fooling around because the noises they were making were hurting his head, they'd all gone suddenly quiet and stared at him. The confusion on their faces had quickly segued into alarm, and he had realized that okay, something was very wrong.

Yes. Something had indeed been very wrong. Not only didn't he understand them, they didn't understand him. Cue emergency transport to the nearest hospital. He had been CAT-scanned, MRI-scanned, MEG-scanned, and subjected to every other scan and test known to man. He'd been lying there, trying to not panic at the sheer number of medical staff that buzzed around him, at the look of tightly tamped down urgency in their eyes – the kind he associates with life threatening injuries, his own or others'. Stroke? Brain tumor? Maybe Loki's mind control had left lasting damage.

Natasha, bless her, had stared down the medical staff when they attempted to make her leave. At least that was what he assumed they had been trying to do. She'd only left the room when they were actively scanning him. It had been so overwhelming that he's pretty sure that had she not been there, he would have bolted at the first opportunity. Even at the time he had realized the impulse to get away was irrational, he needed to stay where he was, but it had been so intense, had pressed against every cell in his body. He knows Natasha had seen it.

The urge to run is still there, but it's manageable. Not that the situation is any less terrifying, because after days and days of tests and scans medical experts still have nothing. For all intents and purposes, his ability to process and formulate words has just vanished. And it hadn't taken him long to realize that it wasn't just spoken words.

It was written words, too. And signed words. And numbers. And…

Yeah.

He goes back to kicking the crap out of the dummy.

'* '* '*

Clint looks up when Natasha knocks on the open door. He hasn't showered or changed after his workout yet, he's exhausted. She makes the universal gesture for 'eat', followed by a question mark in the form of a raised eyebrow. He gives her a thin smile. She's not prone to mother henning, but here she is, and it just drives home what he already knows. This is bad.

He's thankful she doesn't speak to him. She had tried at first, but every time he had heard her usually smooth and even voice being transformed into harsh, unrecognizable noises, his stomach had gone nauseatingly tight. Natasha had obviously picked up on his discomfort and had stopped almost immediately.

It's so damn frustrating. To his ears he's speaking perfectly understandable English. They, on the other hand, sound like they're doing their best to impersonate a rusty saw on metal while speaking in tongues. He thinks he probably doesn't sound like that to them, because none of them wince when he forgets and talks to them. Well, Steve winces, but Clint's pretty sure it's not because his voice hurts Steve's ears. It's a dejected and unhappy thing and it makes Clint want to punch him. The whys of that particular reaction are still a little foggy. Bruce doesn't wince, but his eyes flicker to the side for a split second. He thinks Bruce is probably not even aware of the reaction, but he sure is. And Tony, well, Tony frowns at Clint like he's personally affronted by his situation, and then usually disappears. Natasha is the only one who doesn't bat an eye.

She waits while he showers and changes. When he comes out from the bathroom she sits cross-legged on his unmade bed, flipping through one of the magazines that litter the floor. He catches a glimpse of a smiling, blond model on the glossy cover. Natasha smirks as he snatches the magazine from her hands and tosses it into the corner. He does _not_ read Vouge. It had been mixed in with the issues of Digital Photography he'd lifted from the common area a few weeks ago.

She's still smirking as they ride the elevator down to the garage, and Clint folds his arms over his chest. "You're such an ass," he grumbles. Natasha laughs and tosses him the car keys as the doors open. She points at one of Tony's more modest cars, a dark sedan with tinted windows. He gets behind the wheel. The engine growls to life and he hums in satisfaction. Modest, but not without claws and fangs.

Clint pulls out and follows her silent directions through the post-lunch traffic and out of the city. They're somewhere south of Newark when Natasha taps him on the arm and points at the exit coming up. She directs him onto smaller and smaller roads, and they end up at a strip mall where a steakhouse is crammed in between a nail salon and what tries to pass as a legal office. Looks more like a front for a business that operates just a bit south of legal.

The restaurant is small but cozy, and the waitress shows them to a booth in the back. She hands them laminated menus and he hears Natasha rattle something off. Ordering them both drinks, no doubt. Clint feels ridiculously relieved when the waitress walks away.

He scans the room. They've missed the lunch rush, so only a few tables are occupied. The volume of the music that is playing is blessedly low. Another thing all fucked up. Melodies are fine, but the vocals all sound atonal and weirdly wrong-paced. Clint isn't much into instrumental music, so his playlists have been sitting untouched since the day of the incident.

He studies the menu intently and tries to figure out where the burger section is. Not that knowing where to look would make any difference at all. He sighs and rubs at his eyes. He's pretty sure he won't be able to finish a full meal, but if he's going to try he wants a burger with ridiculous amounts of cheese and bacon. He gives up on the menu and puts it down. He mimes eating a burger with his hands and Natasha nods.

Charades are pretty much the only thing they have at their disposal right now. Obviously he's tried every single language he speaks - even the ones he only knows enough of to order a beer, swear, and ask directions to the train station – in the hope that somehow it would only be his English that's affected. But that would be way too easy, wouldn't it? He looks up when Natasha's fingers tap the menu he's scowling at. She slides her phone over the table and he takes it, unsure of what she wants him to do with it. She reaches over and taps the screen and a clip starts playing.

It's a kitten clip and Clint snorts. Subtle, Romanoff. Real subtle. But okay, he will try to lay off the moping for a while. When she tries to take her phone back he pulls it out of reach and watches the entire clip, and the one that's cued up after it. He keeps his attention on the screen when the waitress comes back with their drinks and tries to concentrate on the soundtrack someone has added to the clip (how the hell he knows the melody is from Sponge Bob Square Pants is anyone's guess) while Natasha places their orders.

The burgers are good, the cheese and bacon are plentiful, and the clip actually lifted his mood a little. They eat in comfortable silence, and Clint relaxes. He watches the young man and woman across the room. They're winding up for a real fight, he can see. Both of them getting tense and frustrated, and as he chews on his burger the volume of their discussion grows and the woman's hand gestures get progressively wider and sharper.

"Ah, young love," he grins. "Wouldn't surprise me if that guy spends the night on the couch tonight."

He sees movement in the corner of his eyes and the waitress is there. Her smile doesn't falter, but it's in Clint's job description to be observant, so he sees the way her eyes flicker, the flash of discomfort. He has comes to suspect that his words won't pass for a foreign language, and her reaction verifies it. He looks away but not before seeing the look she gives Natasha, and he almost hears her thoughts. Poor woman, having to babysit someone who's obviously not right in the head. It's easy to put his face and body language into neutral, and he locks his eyes on the backrest behind Natasha. The waitress starts to speak, probably asking Natasha if everything tastes okay, if they need something, but Natasha cuts her off, her voice flat and cold. The waitress freezes for a moment, then hurries away.

Natasha scowls after her, then reaches across the table, but stops before she can touch him and pulls her hand back. Clint glares at the wall and tries to find the anger that's been close to the surface ever since this whole fucked up thing started.

He can't. He just sits there feeling claustrophobic and stupid and _broken_.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

Natasha is called out later that night and Steve comes by to convince Clint to join him for take-out. Thai, if the graphics on the menu he holds up is anything to go by. Clint agrees and when the food arrives the two of them eat at the breakfast bar in Steve's kitchen. The silence that is so comfortable around Natasha feels tense and oppressive, and Clint excuses himself before he has finished half of what's on his plate. He knows Steve is watching him as he walks away.

He takes the stairs to his place. The low-grade nausea is getting more insistent, and he takes an antacid before going to bed early. Like, nine o'clock early. He downs a sleeping pill before turning out the lights. He doesn't usually take sleeping aids, in case they're summoned during the night, but there's no risk of that, is there, and he doesn't want to stare at the darkness for hours.

He dreams of rooms with cold floors and wakes up afraid of something he can't remember, left only with a sense of silent, skulking danger devoid of shape or reason. Sometimes he thinks those dreams are worse than the nightmares from which he wakes up with his fight-run-hide instincts in terrifying overdrive. At least he knows what he's scared of then.

He lies there and blinks at the faint greenish light from the analog clock that JARVIS is projecting on the wall. Clint can't read a digital clock, but they found out that his brain can apparently decipher an analog one by looking at the position of the two hands. He won't have to use the position of the sun to keep track of time. Yay.

It's almost two a.m. and he knows he should sleep some more, another hour at least. Unfortunately his brain has other ideas, and after spending an unsuccessful half hour trying not to think about his current situation and his potential future, he rolls over and grabs a pair of jeans and a t-shirt from the floor by the bed. Might as well get something productive done if he's not going to sleep. Maybe it'll distract him a little.

He snaps his fingers and points at the ceiling. JARVIS slowly turns the lights up until Clint makes an abortive motion with his hand. The AI has the same problem as the rest of the world when it comes to understanding the new and improved Clint Barton, but Tony's programming is pretty damn awesome, and JARVIS and he have developed their own shorthand over the past few days. Lights up. Lights down. Lock down the floor. Pull up the movie list (the thumbnail version).

The guys have new call signs, too. Natasha (wiggling his fingers by the ear to indicate her longer hair), Tony (a finger to his chest), Steve (a circle in the air), Bruce (a fist, which the man in question had winced at. Sorry, Banner). He can ask JARVIS where they are by snapping his fingers and making the associated sign. To which the AI pulls up a digital floor plan and shows him. Clint's spatial understanding is unaffected and he has no idea of why this is different from the other things, or why these very rudimentary signs works, but not proper sign language. Maybe it's a matter of complexity. God, he hopes it's not, because that would say all kinds of bad things about his head. The nausea climbs higher in his stomach.

He pads across the floor, grabs the remote and turns the TV on. JARVIS knows what kind of movies he usually watches, so a couple of teasers start running in parallel to give Clint a choice, but he shakes his head and the screen immediately switches to one of the 24-hour news networks. Soundless. He gives JARVIS a thumbs up. He doesn't care which news station it is, he isn't really interested in watching, he just wants it running in the background, wants the normality of it - even if he has to mute it to keep the anchor woman's voice from making his ears bleed.

He retrieves the cleaning kit from the closet and grabs the Colt from the biometrically coded bedside table. He's had that thing for months and he really needs to figure out a way to tell Tony how great that thing is, the way he just has to put his hand anywhere on the table for the lock to disengage.

He settles down cross-legged on the floor and lines the contents of the cleaning kit up in front of him. His Colt doesn't really need cleaning, because even though his living space might look like a disaster zone sometimes, weapon maintenance is second nature. He drops the mag and checks the chamber. Every now and again he sees a look of surprise on someone's face when he pulls off a near-perfect grouping on the shooting range. Despite what some may believe he's not a one-trick pony, you don't survive as long as he has by relying on just one type of weapon. He likes knives for close-range combat. Guns for mid-range. His bow for long-range. Of course, sometimes he has to use whatever he can get his hands on, but he's pretty good at improvising, so it's rarely a problem. Still, using the optimal tool for the job improves the odds, and that's something most people in his trade strive for.

He removes the Colt's slide catch and decides to do the rest by touch. He closes his eyes and feels the way the gun changes gradually as he goes about it. When the last part detaches he opens his eyes again and looks down at the neat row in front of him. Dull black against the light cloth underneath. He knows every little part, knows the smallest detail and angle, and working with it settles him in a way he never really spent much time thinking about until Natasha pointed it out to him and called it his safety blankie. There hadn't been any derision in her words, she hadn't said it to make fun of him, she'd just been pointing out what she saw.

He wonders what she sees when she looks at him now.

He removes the recoil spring and the guide rod, grabs a brush and starts in on the barrel while he tries to visualize the alphabet in his head. It doesn't work. He tries numbers, zero to nine. Same result. Just vague shapes that he _knows_ are wrong. It's weird what he can and can't do. Speech sounds awful in any language and through any media, and writing just looks like random spiky lines and squiggly curves. But he can interpret maps and analog clocks and simple pictograms.

He's been scanned three times in these eight days. He assumes they don't scan him every day because they don't want to expose him to too much radiation, magnetic fields, voodoo, and whatever the hell else they use to check his brain. But those tests are way better than the cognitive tests they put him through every day. He sits at a desk and they deal him an unholy number of UNO-like cards with what he assumes are numbers or letters. And this far every day has been the same; he can't decipher a single one of them. They show him pictures of things like an apple, with what is probably an A as an accompanying card. He copies it, memorizes its shape, the unfamiliar way his pen has to move to write it. Banana. B. Cat. C. Dog. D. He's gripping the pen far too tightly, because this feels an awful lot like trying to learn how to read and write all over again, and he doesn't like it. But the doctors are not berating him or shaking their heads with disappointment, not even when the picture of the apple comes up again, and for the life of him Clint can't remember how to write what apparently passes for an A these days.

They do it again and again and again, and he keeps failing. It's depressing. And demoralizing. And deeply, deeply frightening.

He feels a little bad for the neuro-linguist who had administered the test this morning. After an hour of chafing failure, Clint had reached his flashpoint and had snatched the whole deck from the man's hands and hurled it at the wall in frustration. Brightly colored cards had gone flying everywhere, and judging from the doctor's not-quite suppressed flinch, he had known exactly the kind of damage Clint was able to inflict on him should he chose to. He really needs to find a way to apologize. The guy was just doing his job.

But they've been able to establish some kind of baseline, at least. He can't read or write or understand speech, but his ability to solve certain kinds of problems has not been affected. 'Based on this sequence of symbols, what would be the next one?' and so on. He's always been good spotting patterns, and based on the approving nods of the doctors and later, Tony's enthusiastic thumbs up, he still aces those tests.

He snorts. Yeah. He can see the job ad: Now hiring - Severely communication-challenged visual puzzle solver. Personal issues, triggers, and no formal education a merit. Clint has never had any illusions about why SHIELD recruited him off the streets all those years ago, and what his value to them was back then. Had something happened during those first couple of years that had rendered him unable to function as a sniper, he's pretty sure he would have gotten a prorated paycheck, a pat on the back, and a 'Goodbye, don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out'. He doesn't know at which point his currency had increased in value enough to warrant a contract that covered long-term or permanent injury, since he rarely bothered to read the papers that came from HR. It was only after an injury that would come to sideline him for four months that Phil had sat him down and explained to him in very small words (because apparently it wasn't the first time he had tried to tell Clint) that he wasn't going to be kicked out on his ass.

Those first two years at SHIELD hadn't been easy. Clint looks in the rear-view mirror and sees someone who tried so very hard to prove himself adult and competent and worthy of the job he'd been given, while every cell in him raged against the rules and regulations and expectations that were imposed on him. Not because they were unreasonable in any way, it was simply the feeling of losing his sovereignty and in the process losing himself. But he's always been a stubborn asshole, so he had stuck with it. Not because SHIELD had given him direction, or a sense of purpose, or anything like that. At the moment it simply seemed a better option than a life on the streets. Also, the prospect of spending the rest of his life in prison, or looking over his shoulder while killing people for money, hadn't appealed.

Two years in he'd ended up with Phil's as handler, and he has come to realize that it was from that moment on that everything started to change. Client knows he wasn't an easy person to deal with back then, and he had made Phil work for every inch. Despite his attitude, Phil had kept him and eventually the inches had grown into feet had grown into yards had grown into a trust which, admittedly, had been thin as overnight ice at first. But it had solidified over time and at some point it had become the ground under his feet. Purpose had come with it, and direction, a kind of true north to navigate after. To this day he still has no idea what he did to deserve Phil's unwavering faith in him. Or Natasha's trust when she came along a few years later. There is one thing he knows, thought. Had it not been for the two of them he would have left SHIELD many years ago and would most likely have ended up in a shallow grave.

His SHIELD life might be over now, because what if he never gets better? He blinks at the sudden heat in his eyes. What if he's stuck like this for the rest of his life? He'll be useless. Sure, his eyes still work just as good as ever, but he won't be able to understand instructions given on the fly, or relay vital information. If this proves to be permanent it's goodbye field work, In fact, it's goodbye SHIELD work in any capacity, goodbye Avengers, goodbye Natasha.

He rubs at his eyes. No. That's unfair. It's just his messed up brain digging up stuff long ago put to rest. But despite his best attempts at ignoring it, the notion keeps coming back to whisper dark predictions in his ear while he finishes up and assembles the Colt again. What if without work as a common denominator and without a way to communicate, she'll eventually gravitate away, towards something else? Someone else.

His stomach tightens and the nausea takes a giant step forward. He swallows and puts the gun down on the floor. Fuck. This feels like it might…

Yep. He spends the next slice of eternity on his knees in front of the toilet, evicting his dinner. God. He hasn't thrown up like this since he caught that stomach bug in Scotland. It had been New Year's Eve, and they'd had two days to kill before heading back home, so the next morning when he was puking his insides out, everyone thought he was hung over and he got no pity whatsoever. Assholes. Maybe it's the stress of the past week? But nah, he spends a lot of time in what is the very definition of a high-stress environment, and it has never affected his stomach like this. Natasha doesn't call him 'appetite on legs' for nothing. Maybe it's an unexpected side effect of the ray gun.

He suddenly pictures frantic Hydra engineers running in panicked little circles around the drawing board.

Insane Hydra engineer1: A bug, it's a bug! It's only supposed to affect the speech center, not the appetite! It's outside of specifications, and god, oh, god, how are we going to fix this before the deadline tomorrow? It needs to be to spec. Failure is not an option. Insane Hydra engineer2: I have an idea! Let's call it a feature!

Clint snorts and puts his forehead down on his arms. Yeah. No, probably not. A second later he moans pitifully. What's left of the curry and rice comes up. Could simply be the food, he realizes. And god, if it is he hopes with all his might that Steve's super serum doesn't protect him, because this is _his fault,_ and if Clint has to suffer, so should Steve. Clint wouldn't have eaten that crap if it hadn't been for him.

Stupid Steve.

Stupid curry.

Aaaand he has now officially regressed back to a five year-old. Another feature? He can't help it, he snickers into his arms. It's not funny, but thinking too seriously about what else that fucking thing might have in its repertoire doesn't take him anyplace good, so he doesn't fight it too much.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

Clint is surprised when Natasha knocks on his door the next evening with deck of playing cards in her hand. He wasn't expecting her back for at least a week. She's freshly showered, dressed in worn jeans and an oversized cardigan. A textile version of comfort food. Her body language is casual and relaxed as she smiles at him, but there's a hint of something dark underneath. It's only because Clint knows her like he does that he sees her standing in front of him with one foot in this room and the other still treading dangerous ground out there.

Clint knows what it's like when the people they become in the field resist being put back in the box. But they have to go. He can't stay in field mode 24/7, it's exhausting, and out there he isn't always a good person. He doesn't want to be him all the time. He knows Natasha doesn't either. The time when Natalia Romanova had been synonymous with the Black Widow, and the Black Widow had been synonymous with Natalia Romanova is in the past, and the woman who's kicking off her shoes and making herself comfortable on his couch is no longer just a product of the Red Room.

He likes to think he's had a small part in that.

She shuffles the deck with flourish and Clint watches her closely, because Natasha cheats. She always scoffs at the word 'cheat'. Creative card management is what she calls it, and claims she only does it to keep him on his toes. Whatever term used, she's damned good at it. He watched her fleece a mark once, combining her card skills with that visceral magnetism she can turn on and off at will, and the guy had walked away from the table with a dopey smile on his face and thirty-two grand less in his wallet.

He sits down, pulls his feet up and turns on the couch to face her. She mirrors him and starts dealing, flicking cards onto the couch cushion between them. He studies her. She'll be alright. He knows she'll settle down soon, will eat in a few hours and then hit the sack to sleep for eight hours straight, unless she's called out again. Clint's routine after rough outings is similar, but with an accelerated timeline. Something to get his blood sugar up when he gets back, a quick shower, then it's goodnight room, goodnight moon, lights out for the next six hours. If he's lucky. There have been times he's been in bed all of fifteen minutes when his phone rings.

Natasha elects to play Stress, but Clint's brain is fried from lack of sleep and trying to function in a world where nothing is easy anymore, so he loses five rounds in a row. They switch then, to some Russian game she taught him long ago, that they usually play when one of them is fuzzy with painkillers after some mishap or other. He does better and actually wins the first game. It should annoy him, the way he has to lower the bar, but he just relishes the calm that settles over him as the game progresses and the cards flow back and forth between them like rolling waves. For a while he can almost forget that his head is fucked up.

Natasha gets up and returns from his kitchen with beer. It's one of those fancy artisan beers from Belgium that Tony loves to stock up on, the kind that Clint can't believe he actually likes. But he does. He takes a swig and puts the bottle on the table next to him. Natasha starts shuffling the deck again, but he reaches over and grabs it from her, because she has started to win a suspicious percentage of their games. She just shakes her head with an indulgent smile, like he's silly for even thinking that she would cheat.

He's decent at card management, too, so he wins the next round, as well as the next. And the next after that. Natasha pouts and decides they're done playing.

He flicks a card at her. Sore loser. She bats it out of the air while reaching for her beer. He lets another one fly. After the third one she makes a grab for the deck, but he pulls it out of reach over his head and manages to flick another one at her at the same time. It hits her squarely in the forehead. She growls and Clint decides to quit while he's ahead.

He gets JARVIS's attention and makes the sign for the movie list. He follows up with Natasha's sign, and a thumbnail selection based on her preferences comes up. He selects Nightmare Before Christmas. She glances over at him, her smile going warm. He shrugs casually, like it's a random choice. But it's not. It's one of Natasha's go-to flicks when she's feeling unsettled. It had been Phil who had pointed out the pattern to him a few years ago when Clint had whined to him about having that damn soundtrack stuck in his head _again_. Clint has never mentioned anything to her, because he knows that if he points out the tell, she would eliminate it in a heartbeat. He's got a feeling that the Red Room probably wasn't all that big on feel-good stuff, so he wants her to have this.

"I wish you hadn't had to grow up like you did."

His closes his mouth. He hadn't meant to say that.

Natasha is laying down to put her head in his lap, but stops halfway and looks at him. When she keeps looking he shakes his head with a smirk that doesn't feel quite right. Hopefully she'll assume he was teasing her about the movie, he usually does. Then he remembers something and pushes at her to sit up. The wireless headset is lying on the bedside table in his room and he fetches it for her. Just because the noise sets his teeth on edge he sees no reason she can't listen to Jack the Skeleton King lament his woeful existence.

She accepts the headset with a nod. They settle down and he starts running his fingers through her hair as the movie starts. He's always heard how having one's hair played with is stress reducing. Clint rather thinks he relaxes more when he's the one doing the playing. He twirls a strand of red hair around his finger. It had taken years to get to the point where he was allowed this.

He looks down at her and smiles. "I had such a crush on you the first few months." He scratches lightly at her scalp with his nails. "Puppy-dog love at its finest. But you know that, right?"

He's sure she does, but they've never talked about it, and it's in the past.

Crushing on people is something he indulges in. It's pretty innocent; his crushes are fast to come and fast to go, and he very rarely let them become more. He prefers to keep them at a comfortable distance. Lust, on the other hand, well, lust is very different from a crush, and it's something he likes to act on. There's something bright and clean about that want, want, want, right here, against the wall, clothes off _now_. That's probably why the rumor mill around HQ still burbles words like 'friends with benefits' and 'open relationship' when it comes to him and Natasha.

Lust is easy. His relationship with the other l-word is more strained. Most days he's not sure it exists outside of movies and chick lit novels. But every now and again he thinks that maybe it does, only it's nothing like what the world wants you to believe it is. It's someone to watch your six, someone to clean your gun when you're too tired to lift it, someone to fight with (side by side on the field, face to face in the car). It's someone to anchor you when you're too scared to breathe, someone to tell you that those people were wrong, so wrong, when long-ago spoken words snap at your throat and all you want to do is hide. The fact that he sometimes wants to wrap his arms and legs around her and do more is neither here nor there. It simply isn't on the table, and he respects that.

But he's only human, so he still wants it sometimes.

Neither of them is comfortable talking about feelings. He doesn't like the power some of the words hold, the way they will turn on you in the worst possible way at the worst possible time. To her the words involved are empty. There's no one like you. You're beautiful. I think I love you. Spoken by her – or to her – they're just means to an end, and Clint may be a lot of things, but he doesn't want to be that. He thinks she doesn't want him to be that, either. He suspects a lot of it has to do with all the honey pot missions she was sent to do while growing up, the kind she still takes on when required. It's easy to see how that might shape someone's perception of things.

Jack Skellington is trying to make the monsters understand the concept of Christmas gifts when he feels her eyes on him. He glances down. She's watching him. Calmly. Curiously. He makes a face at her and pushes her head so she faces the TV again. She starts yawning halfway through the movie. Clint taps her on the shoulder and nods towards the bedroom. It's a standing invitation. A comfortable bed, a safe place, a few hours of rest when she knows with absolute certainty that she's got someone watching her six.

She considers it, her lips pursed, then nods and sits up, slides the headset off.

He turns, throws his arm over the back of the couch and watches her walk towards the bedroom, a little surprised that she agreed. She rarely takes him up on that invitation. Comfort is a thing Natasha gives and takes when destruction and pain and slick red blood is all around, when one of them has been cut or shot or beaten to hell, but away from that it's more difficult. More complicated. So the fact that she's staying means that despite the short duration this op must have been a rough one. If she's allowed and if she wants to, she'll share with him at some later point. If not, well, then she won't. Him asking will change nothing. Except for maybe setting her on edge. But that's a moot point, anyway. Thanks to Hydra.

He hears the scrape of a drawer. She's getting one of his t-shirts to wear in bed. A moment later she comes back out, makes a gesture like brushing her teeth. He gets to his feet and beckons her with him into the kitchen. He tosses her a banana, and pulls a small strawberry yogurt container from the fridge. She needs to eat something. While she eats he goes to the bathroom and digs through his cupboards. He finds an unopened pack of toothbrushes and when Natasha joins him in the bathroom he hands her one.

"It's totally your color," he tells her with a mostly straight face.

She scowls at the violently pink toothbrush in her hand, then up at him.

"What?" He lifts his hands like he's got no idea what she's on about.

She flips him off with what is doubtlessly an inventive and scathing insult, and Clint can't help it. He fucking _cringes_ at the sound. A look of uncertainty and guilt flits over Natasha's face.

Fuck. Rewind, rewind, rewind. He squeezes his eyes shut and feels like the biggest asshole in the world.

"Sorry. I'm sorry."

He stands there with his knuckles pressed into his eyes, frustrated and angry with himself until he feels her hand on his forearm. When he lowers his hands, she's already at the sink, rinsing the toothbrush and uncapping the tube of toothpaste.

"Nat. I didn't—"

She meets his eyes in the mirror and nods. He can almost hear her real voice - the one as familiar as his own - speak the words she doesn't say.

 _I know. It's okay._

Clint blows out an uneven breath and busies himself with his own toothbrush. No. It's not okay. This situation is so very far from okay, he's going to need a map to find it again. But he knows that's not what she means. She's telling him _they're_ okay, and in that moment he's so very, very grateful that she's there.

Still brushing, Natasha removes the elastic band that's holding her hair back with one hand and places it on the counter. She runs her fingers through it, shaking it out.

"You know I'd do anything for you, right?" Clint tells her around his toothbrush. She does, he knows that, but he suddenly wants to tell her in words, straight up, now that there's no risk it will throw things out of alignment between them.

When he glances up, she's looking at him, but doesn't say anything.

They finish up, and with nothing much to do and only a few hours of sleep the previous night, he decides to hit the sack, too. He strips down and gets under the covers. She gets in next to him and turns out the lights. Within a few minutes she's asleep, he can tell from her breathing. For once, he's not far behind.

'* '* '*

Clint wakes in the middle of the night from the same damn dream. He lies there, staring into the darkness and tries to banish the anxiety that skitters under his skin. He doesn't know how long he's been awake when Natasha rolls over with a sleepy sound and settles against him. She's warm and familiar and though it doesn't help him fall asleep, it makes the tension in his chest retreat a little.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4  
**

Natasha checks in on him now and again over the next few days, sticks her head in, looks Clint over, then heads back out without any attempt to communicate. Clint wishes everyone else would take their cues from her. It's not that he doesn't want to engage with people, it's just… Well, no. That's exactly it. He doesn't want to be around them, because they get tense and he gets tenser, and everything's just too wrong. So he does what any well-adjusted, mature man would do.

He avoids them.

It's late afternoon and Clint is sitting on the floor, surrounded by two thousand jigsaw puzzle pieces, when Stark knocks on his door, carrying a pizza box and beer. The urge to close the door in his face is strong, but despite what some people say, Clint actually has some manners so he steps aside and lets him in. Doesn't mean he's thrilled about the company. If he's lucky Stark will just drop the stuff off and leave. Stark takes two steps into the room and stops when he spots the puzzle on the floor. Clint just shrugs at the smirk. So what if it's of a tropical sunset with dolphins jumping and palm trees. He'd been going insane with boredom and it's a pretty good way to pass some time.

Stark heads straight for the terrace doors, taking the food and drinks with him outside, and Clint sighs. There goes the hope that Stark is leaving. The terrace floor is cool under Clint's bare feet, but the air is still pleasantly warm. Stark drags two garden chairs from their tasteful little arrangement in the corner and positions them by the railing. He snaps his fingers and points at the small table. Clint obediently carries it over and puts it down between the chairs. He sits down as Stark opens the pizza box, and god, that smells amazing. Clint takes the offered slice and takes a cautious bite. Then all but inhales the rest of it. He's suddenly starving. And the nausea has yet to make an appearance today. Knock on wood.

They sit in the late September sun and eat in silence, chairs tilted back, bare feet and sneakers propped up against the railing. It's nice, less awkward and less uncomfortable than he expected, because against all odds Stark actually manages to keep talking to a minimum. Clint grins into his beer, because Tony Stark forcing himself to not talk, that's gotta be torture, man.

Stark doesn't eat much, but he doesn't seem in a hurry to leave. He fiddles with his phone and suddenly shoves it in Clint's face. Clint wipes the grease off his fingers on his jeans and takes it. It's a clip. He wonders if they've been sitting around the breakfast table coming up with ways of communicating with him. This clip isn't a kitten clip, it shows a shooting range. An instructor walks along a row of what looks like police academy cadets firing down their lanes. Occasionally he stops and waits until someone finishes a series and lowers the weapon, then steps up and Clint sees him correct something. Stance, balance, angles.

He glances over at Stark who makes a gesture like 'just a thought'.

Clint looks back at the screen. Yes. It actually is a thought. It's something he might be able to do. He'd probably have to work in pair with someone, and he'd be the most hands-on instructor in the history of history, having to demonstrate everything he tries to get across. But it could actually work.

'* '* '*

This time it's an SUV. Dark red. Black-tinted windows. Clint pulls the driver side door open, and stumbles backwards with a startled curse as he gets a face full of German Sheppard. Natasha makes a noise that sounds suspiciously like a suppressed giggle. When Clint glares at her she's innocently digging for something in the bag that's slung over her shoulder and won't meet his eyes. He can see she's trying hard to not laugh her ass off.

"You trying to give me a heart attack, here?"

Natasha gives up on the pretense of innocence.

"You're an evil, evil woman." He holds out his hand for the dog to sniff before scratching it behind one ear.

They spend an hour and a half getting out of the city, and the only thing heard during the entire time is the even rumble of the engine. Natasha taps him on the arm when she wants him to exit the highway. They drive through a quaint little town and park in a small, graveled parking space next to a red barn. Natasha clips a leash on the dog and gets out.

She slips her arm under Clint's as they start walking at a sedate pace down along a narrow, overgrown canal. The dog trots next to Natasha, his collar jingling. The way it carries itself tells Clint it's probably a working dog. Security, maybe. He wants to ask Natasha where the hell she got a German Shepherd, but though he might convey the question, any answer will be more complicated to get across, and he doesn't want the frustration to build up again. Not when it's finally retreated enough that he feels like he can breathe a little easier.

Natasha veers off the trail onto a smaller path and soon they reach an opening with picnic tables and a large grassy field. Looks like the outskirts of a larger recreational area because he spots street vendors on the other side, and people are milling around. Natasha lets the dog off the leash and shifts her bag from her shoulder. She doesn't pick one of the tables, instead walks to the edge of the field.

He grins when she unpacks a blanket and shakes it out before putting it down on the grass.

"A picnic date, really?"

She pulls the shades down from her head and settles down. The dog comes up and snuffles and nuzzles her, and she fights him off with a good-natured push. She gives it a short command and it lies down on the grass next to her, relaxed but attentive to their environment.

It's an impressive dog, solid, large for its breed, with the first hints of gray in the black around its muzzle. Not a spring chick. Natasha pulls out a tennis ball from her bag, and the dog's ears peak sharply. Its focus narrows like a camera shutter when Natasha tosses it to Clint. The dog doesn't move, but its tail starts thumping against the grass. Clint tosses the ball into the air a few times before turning and heading out onto the field. The dog gives a short pathetic whine behind him, and Clint turns. The dog looks at the ball, then at Clint, then at the ball again. Another whine.

"Come on, then," he tells the dog, and even though he knows the words are all wrong, apparently the tone of voice is right, because the working dog vanishes and an over-grown, greying puppy bounds towards him, all play and happy, goofy energy. They spend an afternoon throwing balls and chasing sticks. Yes, Clint chases sticks that day, shut up, it's the first time since he woke in the back of the jet that he's feels something that doesn't fall under the categories scared, angry or numb.

"You know, you're pretty damn amazing, Romanoff," he pants as he flops down on the blanket to catch his breath.

She looks up from her paperback and smiles like she knows exactly what he's saying and agrees one hundred percent. He gives Bouncy a thorough ear rub as the dog joins them on the blanket, his tongue hanging out. Clint gulps down half a bottle of water before pouring the rest slowly into his cupped hand for Bouncy. Bouncy laps it up noisily, slobbering everywhere. When there's no more water, Bouncy flops down next to him and rolls over on his side, clearly as worn out as Clint. Clint lies down as well and puts his hands under the back of his head. He closes his eyes.

He's had just enough time to settle down and relax properly when Natasha taps his arm. He cracks his eyes open, shields them against the sun with his hand. She points at the ice cream stand at the other side of the recreational area, and he shakes his head. He doesn't want ice cream. He closes his eyes again, but her foot connects with his thigh, and fuck, she knows exactly where to hit for it to hurt without having to use much force.

He glares at her, rubbing at his leg. "What?" he demands.

She points at the ice cream stand again.

Forget it. If she wants ice cream she can damn well get it herself. He catches her ankle when she goes to kick him again.

"Dammit, woman."

She looks at him, her eyes calm and very determined, and his good mood evaporates. Fuck. Of course this day had been too good to be true. She's making him _deal_ with this shit. He gives her a betrayed look, but she just leans over and puts a bill in his hand. It's green. That's all he could tell anyone who asked. Hah. That's a joke. He couldn't tell anyone anything. He knows the squiggles there are numbers, but they don't make any sense, and when he tries to identify it by way of president depicted, he draws a complete blank. He blinks. As far as his brain is concerned, he's never seen this face before, and that's not right. He gets his wallet and finds another bill with a different president. He stares at it. Nothing. In the corner of his eye, he sees Bouncy's head come up, ears shifting slightly as he watches the two of them. Clint snatches Natasha's bag from her side, and when he doesn't find her phone right away he dumps the contents on the blanket. There. White flip case with some tacky bling-bling. He pulls out her driver's license from the case and stares at it.

He doesn't know know the woman in the photo.

It feels like he's not breathing right as he digs out his own driver's license. He knows it says Andrew Robinette, it's the alias he uses for bills and speeding tickets and other mundane things. He knows the fake date of birth on it, the fake address. But he doesn't know the guy who looks back at him. His stomach tightens painfully. God, this is new, this hasn't happened before. He stares at the stranger in the photo and something horrible occurs to him. If he suddenly can't recognize himself or Natasha in the photos, does that mean that if he looks up there's s a stranger sitting on the other side of the blanket?

It takes several seconds to make himself look up. He almost crumples from relief when the Natasha in front of him is the woman he's known for more than ten years. But the fear returns a second later, because it hits him that it could still happen, Natasha could still disappear. He suddenly wants to plead with her, please, don't turn into someone else, don't turn into a stranger. Don't leave me.

But he doesn't say anything. He stays on his side and tries to breathe through the moment. He helps an annoyed Natasha put her things back in the bag, then gets his own phone out of his pocket. His fingers feel shivery. He brings up the photo album. Maybe he's just tired. Maybe it's a temporary brain glitch. There. The most recent photo. Berlin a month ago. Checkpoint Charlie. They'd been playing tourists just for the fun of it. He'd asked a woman to snap a shot of them, and they had lined up for a standard couple's photo. But when the lady had counted one, two, and was heading towards three he'd swept Natasha up, bridal-style. At least he'd attempted to, and in the photo he's grinning while trying to avoid a knee to sensitive regions. But Natasha had been laughing, too. Afterwards he'd plead temporary insanity.

He knows all this, yet the couple smiling on the small screen isn't them.

His body suddenly vibrates with the need to move, the need to get away from the smothering fear and this fucked up, damaged person he's become. He gets up clumsily and Natasha looks up at him, concern in her eyes. He walks away without looking back. As he walks he rubs his palm against his chest. His lungs feel tight, like he's not getting enough air. He finds his way back to the car. He's done here. He wants to go home, wants to close his door behind himself, lock it and find a nice, dark little corner in which he can spend the next century or so in. The car is locked and Natasha has the keys, so he sits down against a tree at the edge of the parking area and tries to not look as scared and miserable as he feels. He pretends to check his phone, and uses every ounce of skill he's got to get his body to broadcast relaxed normalcy, because he doesn't need some nosy Nelly to come over to ask if he's okay.

Natasha and Bouncy comes up the trail some time later. When she reaches him she crouches down, a concerned tilt to her mouth, and asks without words what that was all about. He shakes his head, because he doesn't want to play charades, not on this subject. Fuck. He doesn't even want to think about this subject. She studies him for two long seconds, then reaches out her hand. He takes it, lets her help him up.

He brushes himself off. Okay, Barton, meltdown over. Or, you know, shoved down and locked away, to be handled at a later time. Or not. He's leaning very heavily towards 'or not'.

Natasha digs in her pocket and pulls out the money again. She points to another goddamn ice cream vendor, this one located by the side of the big, red barn.

No, seriously, Romanoff, just drop it already.

Natasha waves the bill impatiently. He shakes his head, but she doesn't budge. Anger ignites from nowhere, and he snatches the money from her fingers with an overwhelming urge to rip the piece of paper into little green ribbons in front of her. He doesn't, it's money after all, so instead he glares darkly at her. It affects her exactly not at all, and she hands over Bouncy's leash before walking back to the car.

Clint stalks towards the vendor, angry and he knows it shows. He should get her something cherry flavored. She hates it. He crumples the mystery bill in his fist. The only thing he knows about it is that it's not a one-dollar bill, because two cones of ice cream cones would be more than one dollar, and even though Natasha is a fucking pain in his ass, she wouldn't set him up for humiliation, letting him try to pay with something that is far from enough.

The anger changes as he gets closer to the ice cream stand, goes sharp and pale. For fuck's sake, he's been shot, tortured for information, had his bones broken, his skin sliced open, and he handled every single of those things way better than this.

There's a poster with available merchandise at the stand and Clint quickly identifies what to get himself and what to get Natasha. The guy in the stand smiles at him and says something. Clint hazards that he's asking what he wants. He points at the poster and despite what Natasha deserves he gets her what looks like a cookies 'n cream sandwich. He hands over the money. The guy says something as he hands Clint the change and looks like he's expecting an answer. Clint raises his shoulders awkwardly, apologetically. The guy looks at him for a second, then hands him the ice creams with a friendly smile before turning to the next in line.

Clint takes himself and Bouncy back to the car. He drops the wrapped ice cream sandwich in Natasha's lap without a word and spends the entire trip back looking out the side window.

'* '* '*

He can't get it out of his mind, the way he didn't recognize himself or Natasha, so later that evening he goes to pull out his driver's license again. But he gets derailed, because stuck to his wallet is a purple post-it note. He peels it off and looks at it. Turns it over twice. It's got writing in tiny script on both sides.

He wonders if it's Natasha's handwriting. He thinks it is. Maybe? There's no one else who's had access to his wallet. He studies it another couple of seconds, but the writing makes no more sense than before.

He folds it up carefully and tucks it away in one of his desk drawers. He doesn't know why, but somehow it feels like what's written there is important.

'* '* '*

Natasha must have talked to the medical team, because the next morning there are no UNO cards, instead he's subjected to a brand new batch of various cognitive tests. Clint tries to apologize to the neuro-linguist he scared the hell out of. He's not sure he gets the message across.

Later that day, he's taken for a scan two days ahead of schedule. They find nothing new.

It's tense between him and Natasha for a while. She looks in on him several times a day anyway, and every time he hears the door open he's terrified he won't recognize her. He spends most of his nights searching for Phil and Barney and his mother in his dreams.

Bruce comes around one evening. It takes a while for Clint to understand that he wants him to join them downstairs, but Clint is tired and he doesn't feel well and being around people is exhausting. But Bruce looks so disappointed it makes Clint feel like a bastard, so he sighs and gets up. Sure. Okay. For a little while. Who knows, maybe if he's around them enough he'll get used to their voices. Desensitization therapy. It worked with water after being nearly drowned a couple of times, so why not this.

But he regrets his decision as soon as he walks in. Noise hits him, sharp and discordant and his resolve crumbles. This was a mistake. He can't do this. But as he turns to leave he sees Natasha nod at him from across the room, and she looks so quietly pleased that he can't leave. A few minutes, he promises himself.

Stark brings him a beer. He's already drunk, Clint can tell, and holds up his bottle, waiting for Clint to clink his own against it. He does, then takes the first gulp of beer. He puts a hand over his mouth to keep from spitting it out. It's disgusting. It's sour and stale, with more than a hint of swamp water. For a fleeting, panicky moment Clint can't breathe, can't move, he's sure his messed up brain is fucking up this, too, but then he sees Stark laughing his ass off and he gets it. A practical joke. Hah hah, very funny. Clint flips him off, trades the gag beer for the beer in Stark's other hand. He looks at the label and recognizes the graphics and the color scheme. This should be safe. He takes a cautious sip. Yes. Thank god. Stark keeps laughing and claps his shoulder before ambling back to the bar.

Clint sits down at the far end of the couch and nurses his beer. No one tries to speak to him, but they keep feeding him beer and little smiles. Food arrives, and the volume in the room goes up. Clint keeps the discomfort from his face, but he feels his shoulders tensing up. He waits until everyone else has gotten their food before heading to the table to grab his own. Taco Bell. Steve's choice probably, because Stark is a Chinese food kid of guy, Bruce will eat anything, and Natasha's preferences run along the lines of Clint's own. Steaks. The rarer the better. He picks up a few nacho chips and returns to the couch. He's not hungry.

Bruce joins him on the couch and they sit there and watch the train wreck that is Stark trying to out-drink Hill, who arrived at some point when Clint wasn't looking. He feels a strange kind of disconnect seeing her in jeans and with her hair in a messy pony tail. Hill toasts him across the room with the beer Stark hands her, and he watches her do a very near spit-take. He can't help grinning as he toasts her back. It's always more amusing when the joke is on someone else. He catches Bruce smiling into his food. Clint sits back. He likes Hill. She's grounded in a way that makes him think of Natasha, and that's probably why he's gotten along with her so well over the years. He's grateful that she holds no grudge against him for doing his utmost to kill her while under Loki's sway. Not everything is clear in his head from those two days, but he remembers the crackling of the comm unit in Hill's hand, Fury's tinny voice shouting a warning, the deafening sound of his own P30 echoing down the tunnels.

He tugs his thoughts sharply away from the particular minefield that is Loki, because here there be monsters, vicious ones with claws that still rip and tear and cut if he wanders too deep into their territory. Natasha, ever vigilant, catches his eye, but he manages a tight smile. I'm fine, he tries to convey. Peachy. No problem here. She nods and turns back to her conversation with Steve, but he has no doubt that she can see straight through him. The beginning of a headache is pressing up behind his eyes.

Stark suddenly appears, clasps Clint's shoulder and leans in. He says something. He's close and _loud,_ and his voice screeches and crackles painfully in Clint's ears. He has to force himself to stay where he is. Stark is looking as earnest as only a drunk person can, and talks. He talks, talks, talks. Clint is pretty sure he's trying to reassure him that they're working on it, that they're reverse engineering the thing that put him in this position. He knows they are, but he also knows that they're not making much headway, and right now he just wants Stark to shut up and go away. Please. Just stop talking.

Stark gives his shoulder a couple of pats and finally, fucking _finally_ walks off. Clint sinks back into the cushions of the couch and rubs at his temples. He squeezes his eyes shut and tries to block out all the sounds of the room, but he can't. The horrible voices, the sharp dialogue on the TV, all the little movements, the smells, the lights, everything is suddenly under his skin and the claustrophobia he felt at the diner falls back down over him. He gets to his feet. He has to get out of here. Right now.

It's hard to keep his movements smooth and unhurried when all he wants is bolt, but he makes it to the elevator without running. He catches Hill looking at him as the doors close between them. He leans against the cool wall as the elevator starts moving and spends a few moments trying not to hyperventilate. He does so-so.

Natasha slips into his place a while later. By then he's mostly over his freak out, but he still feels unsettled, and if he's honest he's pretty damn miserable as they spend the evening side by side on his kitchen counter, eating green olives straight from the jar. He wonders if she can hear the way his voice wobbles as he tells her how much he hates this, how tired and fucking terrified he is. He thinks she probably can, because she picks up his hand and threads her fingers with his.

'* '* '*

Next morning when he goes to get the first pot of coffee going, he finds another post-it. Green. Fewer words this time.

When he goes to put it in the desk drawer, the first one is nowhere to be found.


	5. Chapter 5

After that late-night kitchen counter admission, telling her things gets easier. And the more he tells her, the easier it gets.

"You scare me sometimes," he says over dinner, twirling spaghetti around his fork. "Sometimes I don't know how far you're willing to go to get the job done."

In the gym later, with his right arm twisted painfully behind his back and her knee pressing into his spine he says, "I always figured I'd be in the ground by twenty-five." He taps out and rolls onto his back when she gets off him. "One way or the other." He takes her hand and lets her help him up.

He tells her he goes to church exactly once a year. He sits in the back pews and prays to a god he hasn't believed in for over twenty years. He prays for his mom, prays that if there's anything more than just nothingness after death that she's in a good place. That she doesn't cry, that she's safe from all the things he couldn't protect her from.

He tells Natasha he misses Barney some days.

He tells her he misses Phil _every_ day.

'* '* '*

The tests show no change in Clint's condition. He neither improves nor gets worse. He compulsively checks his driver's license. He never recognizes himself. Notes keep appearing. Some long, covering most of a notebook page, some short, just a few words. It becomes somewhat of a challenge to catch her red-handed stealing them back. He never does. The first time she leaves a note directly to him she's going to a meeting with Fury. Hand over one eye, growly expression on her face. Clint snickers. But the amusement is short-lived, because there's something jittery about her as she sits at his table and turns a pen over and over and over in her hands. Natasha Romanoff doesn't do jittery. What the hell kind of meeting is this? Is it about him? His stomach tighten.

He taps the table to get her attention, but she keeps frowning at the pen like it's a riddle she needs to figure out. Then she huffs out an annoyed breath and reaches into her pocket. She pulls out a small piece of paper and smooths it out with her palm before scribbling something on it. She pushes it across the table and leaves. Clint turns in his chair and watches her go. When the door closes behind her, he picks up the note. She has written on the back of a receipt. Blue squiggles on white, crinkled paper.

It occurs to him then that maybe he's not the only one sharing secrets.

'* '* '*

New York City slides deeper into fall, and the leaves are gathering on the ground. Clint kicks at them idly as they walk.

"I kinda owe you," he says, because he figures this will be the only time he can tell the man this to his face. He catches Fury looking sideways at him. Why the hell he had showed up at the tower and dragged Clint out – to a park of all places – he will never know. Kinda creeps him out a little, because Fury isn't a take-someone-to-the-park-for-a-stroll kind of person. He's more of a take-someone-to-the-park-and-disappear-them kind of person. He wonders if Natasha has something on him that's compromising enough to blackmail him into participating in project 'Socialize Clint Barton'.

"I know you were thinking of cutting your losses with me back then." He shoves his cold hands deeper into the pockets of his jacket. "So, thanks, I guess. For not doing that. And thanks for looking after Natasha. You can deny it all you want, do your thing with the coat and the glaring and the eye patch and all that shit, but you care for her. I know you do. And you're a member of an exclusive club, because she cares for you, too."

A moment later he can't help snickering, because what pops into his head and out of his mouth is:

"Fury and Romanoff, sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g."

There has never been anything but professional respect between the two of them, but Clint - thirty-six going on seven - thinks the mental image of them up in a tree is fucking hilarious. Fury no doubt picks up on the sing-song rhythm, because he raises an eyebrow in question. Tough titties, old Yeller. Sucks being on the other side of knowing, doesn't it?

It starts to rain and they head back to Fury's SUV. Clint's lingering amusement crashes and burns a while later when he realizes that Fury isn't going back to the tower, but to Shield HQ. He pushes the anger down as best he can. He's getting tired of being railroaded like this. But Fury is still the top dog, and the look on his face when Clint stubbornly stays by the car tells him this isn't an optional visit. Clint trails him unhappily from the garage to the elevator.

The elevator takes off and he locks his eyes on the city that spreads out beyond the glass walls when they clear ground level. He rubs his hands furtively against his jeans, his fingers have started to tingle. The elevator slows down, stops, and people step in. Their harsh, screeching voices assaults him, and he fights the urge to rub at his ears. The doors close again and the elevator suddenly feels small and overheated. Fuck. fuckfuckfuck. Clint wants out. Right now. The elevator stops on several floors. People step out, people step in. He nods in return to a few when he glances up and meets their eyes by accident. He pulls his training closer around him to manage an air of calm. Nothing to see here, people. Move along.

Fury finally gets out of the elevator and by then Clint can hear the blood pounding in his ears. He feels clammy and sick, and it suddenly occurs to him that maybe the anxiety around people is another aspect of the damage done by that Hydra device. Jesus Christ. He licks his dry lips and keeps his eyes straight ahead while they walk, and fuck, Fury must be taking the scenic route to wherever they're going because it's taking for-fucking-ever to get there. A group of office workers pass them, and a woman brushes up against him in the narrow hallway. Clint wants to shove her away, tell her to get out of his space, but that's only going to call attention to him and it's the last thing he wants right now. So he manages a polite smile when she apologizes.

More corridors. More people. More everything. He doesn't know what does it, but suddenly the walls and the ceiling close in and his throat goes tight. He needs air. He needs space. He needs to not be here. Shit. Out. Out, out, out, he needs to get out. He spins on his heel and leaves Fury behind. Fuck him. Clint tries to focus on the anger rather than the crackling anxiety under his skin, and that asshole can throw his ass in the brig for insubordination if he wants to, but he's going to have to drag Clint kicking and screaming there, because there isn't a chance in hell that he's staying here another second. He strides down the corridor, and doesn't hear Fury follow him. Not that that means a thing, the guy moves like a shadow when he wants to. Walk, he tells himself. Walk, don't run. It's hard to not look over his shoulder, so fucking hard.

He half-expects to be stopped at any point, but no one approaches as he makes his way towards the exit. The rain is coming down from a gray sky when he steps out onto the front plaza on shaky legs. He doesn't stop walking until he's in the middle of the open space, as far away from walls and doors and people as he can get. He pulls his phone out of his pocket and snaps a photo of the huge Shield eagle. It takes three tries to get a photo that isn't too blurry. He's got a picture associated with exactly one number in his contact list. Natasha's. It's a photo of her hand, giving him the finger (which is rocking a Minnie Mouse band-aid). He sends the snapshot to her and hopes she sees it for the extraction call it is. Inspired by Natasha's photo he gives one of the security cameras the finger, because there's no doubt in his mind that Fury has tracked him down and put him under surveillance.

He burrows down into his all too thin jacket and waits. Natasha shows up twenty wet and miserable minutes later with a steaming takeaway coffee in her hand and a thunder storm in her eyes. She hands him the coffee and the car keys, and walks inside.

Her lips are pressed thin and the color is high on her cheeks when she returns a few minutes later. She closes the door hard and starts the engine. Her anger fills the car, silent and dangerous. Even though he knows it's not directed at him, Clint feels it like a weight on him.

'* '* '*

The nightmares that had receded a bit over the past weeks come back with a vengeance, and the mere thought of sleep starts to stress him out. He assumes he's starting to look as zombiefied as he feels, because one night Natasha marches in, grabs his pillow and his hand and walks them to her room, looking thoroughly annoyed. When he procrastinates about getting into bed with her she simply turns out the lights and lets him stand there in the pitch darkness. She comes to get him every night until she doesn't have to, until he goes to her on his own. Her bed is comfortable, but truthfully he doesn't sleep much better there than he does in his own, but at least he can reach out and touch her when he wakes after having watched her die in glorious Technicolor. She dies in his dreams. They all die. Over and over and over and he can't save them. He watches Stark die, and Steve, and Bruce, and Hill, Fury, Thor, Phil, even Jane. But most often it's Natasha. He watches her burn, fall to her death, get her head bashed in, bleed out. He watches her die trying to save him even though he's pleading, begging, screaming at her to leave, to go. He doesn't want her to die for him. That's not how it's supposed to go.

So, yeah, despite the change of sleeping venue he doesn't sleep much, and he suspects the sleep debt is part of the reason he finds himself sitting in the center of one of the tower's helipads at 2 am, with Natasha and a bottle of some of Stark's most expensive, most high-proof stuff in front of him, unable to stop the words that tumble out of his mouth.

He tells her he still dreams about Loki. How sometimes he feels like he doesn't have a right to grieve for Phil, like it's something that should be reserved for people who aren't... him. He tells her about being fourteen. About the guy who wanted Clint to call him daddy and kept telling him what a good boy he was. He tells her about the considerate ones, who wanted it to be good for him, and how that made it worse because he didn't want to enjoy any of it. He tells her about the not so nice ones, like the skinny dude with the unfortunate stutter who was a return customer and liked to call him names and smack him around. That was extra of course, and he would only hit until Clint cried. It wasn't as bad as it sounds he tells her, he'd perfected the art of fake tears years before that.

It's hard to meet her eyes when he apologizes for Reno. Reno is a long time ago, a decade plus, but he thinks she has never forgiven him completely for it. That night had been the first time he had seen her cry. Angry, hard, frightened tears that didn't stop her from putting her fingers down his throat to get the booze and pills up, swearing bitterly at him the entire time. He doesn't remember much else, just waking up in some hospital on suicide watch. Phil had been there.

"Back then I hated you for showing up when you did," he tells her. He looks down at his drink. "Now I just hate that I did that to you."

Clint doesn't know how or why Phil did it, but pneumonia with complications was what went into his files. He knows Fury was informed, but as far as he knows that had been it. Natasha. Phil. Fury. He'd been grounded for almost five months, and Phil had told him in no uncertain terms that if he even suspected Clint wasn't fully committed to his own recovery and fully honest with the Shield-vetted, off-site, off-record psychologist, his active field status would be revoked for good. For his own sake as well as for other agents'. Clint knew it wasn't an idle threat, so he had put in the work. He had agreed to medication, agreed to therapy - full disclosure, no bullshit - and it had been the single scariest thing he has ever done. It hadn't been a magic fix, not even remotely close, but he'd gotten himself untangled a little bit, he'd gotten himself back onto more solid ground. He remembers Natasha being cool and distant during those months, and he only later realized how close he came to losing her for good that night.

He doesn't like thinking about that time in his life, so he downs what's left in his glass and changes the subject. He goes on to tell her about the night in the Memphis county jail when he was busted for drunk and disorderly conduct. He'd been very drunk, very disorderly, and it probably hadn't helped that he had mouthed off to the cops. He'd shared a cell with a guy so fat Clint had felt claustrophobic in there. Horace had been nice enough, it was just that he kept insisting on showing his pretty, pretty lace underwear to Clint.

The wind picks up, tugs at Natasha's hair. She keeps drawing her finger through the dust on the concrete between them, only to wipe the marks out with her palm.

Writing. Wiping.

Writing. Wiping.

'* '* '*

Next evening it's Steve who shows up for what Clint has come to think of as the six o'clock feeding. Clint smiles and holds up the bowl of cold noodles he hasn't touched for the past hour. As long as Steve believes that Clint is eating, he will leave him in peace. And apparently he believes it, because he waves and leaves. Clint walks to the kitchen and gets rid of the noodles. He's not nauseous as often as he had been at first, but his appetite has gone AWOL. Most of the time he eats anyway, but tonight he's just too tired to fight himself.

The hours pass and Natasha doesn't come by. He wonders if the sharing got too much for her and she has retreated to regroup. Maybe something unexpected has happened and she has been deployed. The thought makes him uneasy. He tells himself it's because he's not there to watch her back, but that's ridiculous, it's not like he's there for most of her ops, anyway. They work separately more times than not. He tries to shake it off. Natasha would frown if she knew that her absence is making him anxious. He lasts another three hours before he asks JARVIS if she's in the building. He gets a green dot on the map and feels relieved for exactly three seconds. Then he spends the rest of the evening very studiously not thinking about why she hasn't been by.

He can't sleep that night, keeps tossing and turning until he's so frustrated he feels like he's about to break, so he goes to the range to commit target mass-murder. After half an hour he gives up. He can't settle into the right headspace, can't focus enough. He's also starting to feel cold, like he's coming down with a low-grade fever, and wow, the universe just can't get enough of punishing him, can it? Not even a hot shower gets him warm, so he bundles up in two layers of shirts and a thick hoodie and contemplates giving sleep another go when he senses movement behind him. He turns, but stops mid-motion and smoothly waves his fingers to get JARVIS attention. He makes the sign for Natasha. JARVIS needs to alert her, alert the rest of the guys that there's an intruder here.

JARVIS shows a map on the wall with a location indicator. His room. Clint makes Natasha's sign again. Maybe JARVIS misunderstood, but the A.I. stubbornly keeps showing the same display. Clint's room. A blinking green indicator. Something goes cold inside him, and he makes Natasha's sign one more desperate time.

JARVIS turns a spotlight on the woman at the door.

She takes a step forward and Clint backs right into the table behind him. Something clatters to the floor and breaks. She holds her hands by her side, palms out in plain view. There's nothing threatening about her, just a look of slight confusion on her face, but he keeps backing away. Natasha's necklace. Natasha's sneakers. Natasha's jacket. Clint's back hits the wall and he slides down to the floor. The woman's eyes suddenly widen a fraction and a look of devastation falls over her face.

"Go away," he tells her hoarsely, because he doesn't want her here, doesn't want this stranger looking at him like that. It's not her. It's _not_. JARVIS got it wrong.

Not-Natasha reaches out, but he pulls back and she freezes in mid-motion. Her hair is very red, he notes distantly. He tries to remember what color Natasha's hair is, and for a short moment he can't really process what his mind tells him. Then suddenly he can, and he puts his hands over his face with a wail.

He doesn't know what the right color is. There's a Natasha-sized hole in his mind.


	6. Chapter 6

The woman pulls out her phone and dials as she leaves the room. A few minutes later another woman knocks lightly and walks in. Clint tenses. Is this someone else he knows? Pepper? Hill? One of Stark's doctors? She pulls out the chair by his desk and sits. Clint makes it to his feet and inches closer to the bed, to the table with his gun and the knife secured behind it. He tries to convince himself that he's okay, he's safe, there's no way an outsider has made it past security, past JARVIS.

The woman folds her hands in her lap and it looks like she's settling in for a long stay. It takes Clint's overwhelmed brain a few seconds to note a disturbing thing. She's wearing Natasha's necklace. And her clothes. His knees go watery, and he stumbles to the bed and sits down heavily. No. He makes Natasha's sign with a shaking hand, and even though he's kind of expecting it, it's like a blow to the solar plexus when the spotlight shines on the woman in the chair. _No._ Make her come back. The first one. He wants the first one to come back. The horrible irony is not lost on him; a moment ago he wanted nothing to do with the woman who JARVIS had insisted was Natasha, but now he desperately wants her here, because god, this can't be happening, this can't be Natasha, too. It _can't._ He stares at her for a few long seconds, and then, despite the expanding fear in his chest, he starts laughing. Even to his own ears he sounds crazy, but he doesn't care, because his life is a goddamn movie, '50 First Dates', and he's Drew fucking Barrymore. Or that fish, Dory. He buries his face in his hands and his laugh tilts, turns sideways. He rolls off the bed on the side furthest away from her with a sob that can't be contained. He drops his forehead against the bed and hides in the covers he pulled with him. This can't be happening.

But it is. He's losing everything.

 _Everything_.

' _* '* '*_

More people arrive. He thinks Natasha (god, what if it's not Natasha, what if he's wrong, what if JARVIS has been compromised?) keeps them outside for a while, but far too soon they cautiously enter the room, and Clint watches them carefully. He tries to convince himself that they're probably medical staff, possibly even Stark and Bruce and Steve, but that does nothing for the renewed wave of tension that hits him when they step inside _._ A hushed conversation is held just inside the door, and he wants them to get out, to leave, just leave, because it feels like they're using up all the oxygen in the room, like the air is thin and insufficient in his lungs. But of course they don't leave, that would be too easy, wouldn't it?

Once they're done conferring one of the them approaches Clint. He's carefully relaxed, holds a blood pressure cuff in his hand, a stethoscope hangs around his neck. Clint eyes him warily, but doesn't move when the man rounds the bed and sinks to his knees with a suppressed groan. He sits back on his heels and watches Clint calmly. After a few seconds he holds out his wrist a little and puts two fingers on it. He raises an eyebrow. He wants permission to check Clint's pulse. Clint watches his hands for a moment, then nods reluctantly. He's fairly sure he can take this guy down if he needs to. He shifts slightly so he can keep the rest of the people in his field of vision. He wishes he was on the other side of the bed, closer to his weapons. He allows the man (a medical doctor on Stark's payroll, Bruce?) to take his pulse and his blood pressure, but he remains hyper-aware of every move, any little hint of muscles tensing in preparation for an attack. One of the other strangers brings a needle and a few vials, and Clint pulls back for a moment, before he realizes it's not a syringe for giving him something, they just want a blood sample. He reluctantly allows it, but draws the line when he understands that they want him to get up and follow them somewhere. No. He shakes his head sharply. That's not happening. He's not going anywhere.

Another conference huddle by the door, and all but two leave his room. Reluctantly from the looks of it. But probably-Natasha and one of the men stays. Clint is suddenly totally and utterly exhausted, and getting up from the floor is too much work, so he rests his cheek on the arm folded over the edge of the mattress. He closes his eyes. He's leaving himself vulnerable like this, but he doesn't care. It takes a few minutes before he recognizes the feeling that's falling over him. He's going flat, sliding away from what he knows he should feel, and sure, why the hell not? Let's dissociate a little. He's screwed anyway.

He cracks his eyes open a fraction when he hears the rustle of clothes from the other side of the room. The woman isn't moving, just shifting in the chair. Her eyes are red.

'* '* '*

The man eventually leaves, but she stays. Clint doesn't know how much time has passed when he hears her get to her feet. He immediately lifts his head from his arm. She doesn't head towards the door as he expected, instead she walks towards him. She stays on the other side of the bed, sits down with her back to him, and he wonders stupidly if this is some 'dog-whisperer' trick, no eye contact, don't unsettle the traumatized dog. Then she leans forward and fuck, Clint tenses up, because he hears the whisper of his knife coming out of its sheath. He twists and gets his knees properly under himself. She turns towards him, holding his knife by the tip, offering it to him. He stares at her, and when he doesn't take it immediately, she puts it down on the bed between them, then gets to her feet and returns to her chair at the door.

There's only one person in the world who would trust him with a knife in this situation. Clint buries his face in the sheets on the bed and reaches blindly for the blade. His fingers close around it, and he wants to cry again.

'* '* '*

She stays all night. Clint manages a few minutes of slumber that is so shallow that it doesn't count as sleep, and despite the knife the feeling of horrible vulnerability grows in him, grows and grows and grows, and by the time morning light starts to filter through the windows the need to find a safe place to regroup and digest this newest level of fucked-upness is impossible to reason with. Escape and evasion has always been a strength of his, so he waits until there's a shift change and Natasha hands him over to a couple of strangers-who-probably-aren't, presumably to go get some sleep. He makes himself get up and walk to the kitchen, forces himself to eat a little despite the sick feeling in his stomach. He's never left alone, but it's obvious none of his chaperones have any real experience with surveillance, so getting out from under their noses isn't hard. Also, it helps that he knows the weaknesses in the tower's security and can take advantage of JARVIS's few blind spots.

Dropping into mission mode is a relief, because it takes his mind off the mess that is his life. It let's him treat it like a job, no different from making his way through a hostile city where he doesn't speak the language. Here, at least, he has the advantage of knowing the layout of the city. He knows they're already looking for him. Out of concern, no doubt, but they'll want him to go back, and he can't. Not now. He sneaks into a backstreet alley. Despite the wind that skulks harsh and cold through the streets of Midtown, he ditches his jacket in a dumpster along with his phone. He turns his lined hoodie inside out. Instead of blue it's now light gray.

He sticks to smaller streets. Every now and again, he cuts through places that he knows have more than one blind exit. It has started raining when he reaches the closest of the long-time storages he keeps. Clint walks in, and a few minutes later Thomas walks out. Shield has always been good to him, but if Coulson taught him one thing, it was to plan for contingencies, and no one, not even Natasha, knows about this alias. She's got a few of her own stashed away. They're two paranoid peas in a pod, after all. Thomas Sanders is as real as any other person in New York City. He has a birth certificate, social security number, driver's license, phone number, address, a dead-end job, speeding tickets, and a string of domestic abuse charges that have never made it to court. He's got a library card, a debit card, a Sam's Club card, a gym card. He has a change of clothes, 600 dollars in twenties, a burner phone, a loaded Glock 19, and two knives in his backpack. There's a pack of cigarettes and a lighter in the pocket of his jacket. He doesn't have a bow. Thomas doesn't do archery.

Clint pulls up the hood of Thomas's jacket and makes sure he slouches a little, walks with a heavier tread. Changing your physical movement pattern goes a long way towards staying under the radar when people are looking for you. He navigates around a group of school children being wrangled by two tired looking women, and grits his teeth at the sound of their loud voices. At that volume, it hurts. A block later he stops and pulls out a cigarette and a lighter. He cups his hand around the small flame. He hasn't been a smoker since he was seventeen, so it's a habit no one associates with him. Another little detail that will help make searching eyes sweep right past him, because the human brain discards tons of information every second that it deems non-significant, and a lit cigarette just doesn't line up with what people unconsciously are expecting to see. The smoke is harsh and familiar in his lungs, and he thinks back to animal pens and the smell of wet sawdust. He'd stolen a few of Charlie's cigarettes and hidden behind the pens to sneak a smoke. God, he'd almost coughed his lungs up. Clint remembers thinking he looked so grown up and cool with the cigarette casually held between his fingers. Big man. He huffs, darkly amused at the memory. He'd been, what, eleven?

He swipes a bright yellow umbrella from a street vendor and opens it, makes sure he angles it to keep it between himself and the traffic lights and their cameras. He dumps it about ten blocks later as he cuts across an empty back lot. He tosses his backpack over a chain-link fence and climbs it, then cuts across another back lot. These are some dodgier neighborhoods, so he transfers the gun and one of the knives to his jacket. Wouldn't do to get killed in some alley by a twitchy junkie who's looking for money to score.

He eventually makes his way back onto busier streets and very deliberately doesn't look around, doesn't try to spot any potential threats to his newly won freedom, because that kind of behavior will be a neon sign for anyone who knows what to look for. Natasha certainly does, and he's absolutely sure that by now they're pouring over every scrap of camera footage JARVIS can get his virtual hands on. He doesn't want to go back to the Stark compound, not now, so he keeps his eyes forward and makes himself walk at a pace that's appropriate for someone who has a set destination in mind. Not to too fast, not too slow.

By the time he reaches his target, a B&B he has scoped out a few times before, the last of the daylight is gone and he's thoroughly drenched by the rain. He thinks he makes a pretty good deaf-mute impersonation as he gets a room for two nights. It's something that might become a problem, the fact that pretty much everyone he has to interact with will remember trying to hold a conversation with a person who can't speak.

The second-floor room is small, dark, and not terribly clean. It smells like damp and mold. Clint tosses his backpack on the bed. He couldn't care less. The room overlooks a small, unlit parking lot at the back of the building, nothing more than a square of concrete, criss-crossed by weed-filled cracks. He leans his head against the window frame and for a moment he lets his head go blank as he watches the raindrops disrupt the water puddles. He's so damn tired.

The sound of a car backfiring on a nearby street rouses him from his stupor. He peels his wet clothes off and drops them in a pile on the floor before heading to the bathroom. The plastic cover of the overhead light is yellow with age, and the faded pastel pink color scheme of the walls looks decidedly late eighties. There are water stains on the ceiling. It somehow reminds him of the waiting room of a Hungarian dentist that he had the misfortune of having to visit on short notice a few years back. He stops as he catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror.

No one else looks like they should, but he does. The same hair, the same face and scars and build and eyes as always. Natasha once told him she liked his eyes, She had likened the color to the stormy blue of some lake outside of Vladivostok. She had been drunk. _Very_ drunk. The pale pink bathroom counter is cool under his fingers as he stares at himself and imagines looking into the mirror and seeing a stranger. Talk about cognitive dissonance. Yeah, fuck you, Stark, he knows how to use that in a sentence. He heard it enough times while being talked at by psychologists and psychiatrists after Loki, so it stuck. Someone else's face instead of his. He can't imagine it. But then, before this he hadn't imagined looking into Natasha's face and seeing someone else.

He sighs and pushes away from the counter. The water pressure isn't great but the water is hot and he gets a full seven minutes shower before it starts going cold. He uses the small soap from the counter to wash off, then rubs it over his hair and curses when it stings his eyes sharply. Whatever. Shampoo is overrated. When his stomach growls loudly, he realizes he hasn't eaten since this morning. He dries off and pulls the single pair of boxer briefs from the backpack, along with a Woody Woodpecker t-shirt. The rain is heavier now, tapping on the window pane. He looks at the heap of wet clothes on the floor, then at the window again. No way is he putting those on to head out for something to munch on. Forget it, stomach. It won't kill you to wait until tomorrow morning.

He grabs the gun from the jacket, pulls the comforter from the bed, and sits down. He starts thumbing out the rounds from the magazine. The mag is fine, he rotates the ammo in his local stashes about twice a year, but he's got nothing better to do, and if he keeps busy he can maybe keep from thinking too hard about things he doesn't want to think about. Like the very real possibility that he might never see a familiar face again. Ever. Not even if he spends all his time around the same people. He picks up a corner of the sheet and wipes the bullets down before loading them into the magazine again. He reaches over and gets the extra magazine from the backpack.

He needs his weapons, because he still has a bounty or two on his head. His hands stall for a brief moment. What if details about his condition have leaked out? He feels a flash of tension skitter up his back at the thought. How the hell is he going to keep himself safe? Even if the guys who want him dead send someone who's a complete idiot and not only fails, but lets Clint get a good look at him… No worries, dude, just wait around a corner and count to twenty. And besides professional grudges held against him, there are more than a few local guys who would love to beat him to the ground for one reason or the other, and now any one of them could come close enough to actually step on his toes, and Clint wouldn't see the danger before he gets a baseball bat to the back of his head. Jesus.

He finishes up and gets to his feet. He hands Thomas's wet jeans over the shower curtain rod and drapes the jacket over the back of the single chair in the room. Nothing will be completely dry in the morning, but it's a little better than leaving them on the floor. After checking that the door is locked one last time he turns out the lights and gets into bed. He puts his hands behind his head and stares at the dark ceiling and listens to a man and a woman in the next room start yelling at each other. What the hell is he doing? Taking off like this is probably the worst thing he could do, he knows that, but no matter how much he tried telling himself that only friendlies could get inside the tower, that his team was looking out for him, his brain kept throwing up adrenaline-colored warning flags whenever someone approached him, because how could he know for sure? How could he know it was one of the guys?

He tenses as something occurs to him. Shit. _Loki_ could walk right up to him, get close enough to-

Fuck.

Clint spends the night with one hand on his gun, the other pressed against his chest.


	7. Chapter 7

Dawn breaks just as miserably gray as the day before, and Clint's hasn't managed anything more than an hour or two of smoke-thin slumber. He's going on day three without proper sleep and his brain feels like it is vibrating. That along with the halo around the ceiling light in the bathroom tells him he'll probably start seeing movement out of the corners of his eyes within the next few hours.

He leans against the bathroom counter and stares dully at the water going down the drain as he waits for it to run cold. God, he would give just about anything for a chance to take a break from life right now. Just for a little while. A pause button, that's what he wants, some way to get a little well-deserved R&R away from the disaster area that is his head right now.

But Clint doesn't have a magic button, so he sticks his head under the faucet and gets on with the day as best as he can. He needs to eat something and procrbstination will do him zero good, so he heads out a few minutes later.

Between the still slightly damp clothes, the wind, and the fatigue he's miserably cold by the time he reaches the small 24-hour store a few blocks down. Clint gathers a couple of bottles of water, a bag of Doritos, two bagels, an apple, a bag of peanuts, and a frozen pizza. There are only two other customers in the fairly spacious store, but he keeps feeling like there's someone right behind him and his hand itches for the gun that is holstered under his jacket. When he turns, there is never anyone there. Despite the chill in his bones, he's sweating by the time he's at the counter.

The cashier's one-second smile is as fake as her black hair, and thank god for bored employees he thinks, because she doesn't even look at him properly, just rings up his things and rattles out what he assumes is the total. He hands her a twenty. Her black-painted nails click against the register keys, and he watches her carefully for any sign that she's waiting for more money, but it seems like that covers it, and Clint is more than grateful to get out of the store.

He stops outside of a liquor store on his way back and seriously contemplates getting something cheap and liver-damaging and drink himself stupid. Stupid _er_ , because out of the many, many poorly thought out things he's done in his life, this surely ranks up there among the top five. Sure, he's always been impulsive, but there's a difference between impulsive and stupid. He rubs at his dry eyes and sighs, nixing the idea of a booze induced trip to oblivion, because trying to resist more stupidity seems like a good idea.

When he gets back to the room he looks at the bagel for a long time, then puts it back in the bag. He opens the bag of Doritos, puts one in his mouth, then stows that away, too, because the smell is making his stomach do decidedly unpleasant things. The water, at least, is tolerable, and he downs half a bottle.

He rubs his fingers on his t-shirt to get rid of the Dorito dust and looks glumly around the room. Despite his chosen profession, he's not a solitary creature by nature. He likes being around people, but he's self-aware enough to know that even on a good day he's a distrustful bastard, and that makes this situation more hellish than if he'd been blissfully ignorant of what people are capable of. Cheerfully paranoid, Phil had once called him, and for good reason. Clint has trusted very few people in his life, _really_ trusted, and one of them turned on him, one of them is dead because of him, and the third, well, she's gonna kill him once she catches up with him. She _will_ catch up, sooner or later, and most likely she has already gotten tarps, rolls of duct tape, a hacksaw or two, and spent part of the time he's been in the wind by scouting out a dump site where his dismembered body will never be found. She's fond of West Virginia.

He toes off his sneakers and curls up on the bed. He closes his eyes, but has to open them again, because it feels like the room is spinning lazily. No need for that bottle after all, sleep deprivation is a cheap buzz. From his position on the bed he can see a small slice of gray sky outside the small window, and the clouds look heavy and wet, soothing in their colorlessness. He tries but fails to stop the parade of dire predictions his brain keeps throwing at him. They all still boil down to this: He's exposed, helpless. Useless. Tony's suggestion about the shooting range is a pipe dream. Unless the people phobia subsides – which knowing his luck it won't – how the hell is he going to function with a bunch of people who are not only crammed into a confined area with him, but who are also holding loaded guns? And besides, who would take him on? Shield has his history and his merits, but they're not a charity, and that's what he'd be. A charity case.

It's like prodding at a broken tooth with your tongue, but he can't stop himself from closing his eyes and trying to visualize the alphabet for the hundredth time. What comes to mind is another confusing jumble of shapes. He then tries to visualize Phil. Nothing. Fury. Nothing. Stark. Steve. Bruce. Hill. The lunch lady. Carlos Hernandez down in the motor pool. He leaves Natasha till last. He can remember a hundred instances of sitting next to her in Phil's office, sitting next to her on stake-outs, across from her in fast-food restaurants all over the world. He remembers the sound of her voice in the comm unit in his ear, complementing Phil's during their jobs together. She's there, so intensely _there_ , but when he tries to focus on what she looks like, on her face, it's like everything loses cohesion and slides out of focus. She's been a constant in his life for so long, a fierce, slightly stand off-ish constant that showed him what true loyalty means. She has shaped Clint, just as much as Phil did, and now she might as well be dead, too.

Clint thinks that would probably hurt less.

'* '* '*

Two days later he has to admit what he has kind of known all along: he needs to head back. What other choice does he have, realistically? Well, he can think of two, one involves going to ground permanently and the other involves his gun, and both of them are bad. In the early hours of the last night there, Loki shows up in glorious full-HD in a nightmare, taunting Clint with details of all the damage he had so willingly wreaked during those few days. He wakes kneeling on the floor with the gun in his hand and with Loki's ' _kill her'_ fading in his ears. Once he's past the hyperventilation and the adrenaline shakes, he curses the unfairness of it all, because _of course_ the only face he can recognize is _his_.

It's still dark when he heads out, and he ends up walking around for a few hours. He doesn't care about staying out of sight this time. It's time to face the music, buckle down, make the best of the situation, get back up on the horse, and a million other stupid expressions that mean that he needs to get his shit together and stop being an idiot. If the experts can't fix this and this truly is his future, there's no better place to get his bearings and figure out his options than in the tower. It's safe. Provided it hasn't been compromised the annoying little voice whispers, but he shuts it down, because seriously, brain, this is Tony Stark and JARVIS we're talking about, and the thought of the two of them dropping the ball on security (today or any day in the future) is pretty preposterous.

Turning the last corner still feels like stepping up in front of a paper target at the end of a shooting range.

As the sun rises he sits on the cold stone steps in front of the building across from Stark tower, elbows on his knees and head in his hands, waiting for the inevitable. JARVIS perimeter cameras cover every square inch of the tower's surroundings, and he's absolutely sure facial recognition software has been running continuously since he took off.

It takes longer than he expects, but eventually someone climbs the steps and sits down next to him. He doesn't look up. He doesn't want to, because he knows it will be a stranger sitting there. His peripheral vision tells him it's a woman. Natasha, then. Probably. Maybe.

For a long time she does nothing, just sits next to him and watches the street fill up with people going about their day, then her hand slips into his field of vision. He looks at the key chain that dangles from her finger, a small, smurf-blue Kali figure in cheap plastic. He starts reaching for it, then stops. In the end he just flicks it a lightly with his finger and watches it twirl on its chain. When he doesn't do anything more, she eventually gives it an impatient little shake. Clint takes the hint and opens his palm to let her drop it there.

His throat feels tight as he turns the little figure over in his hand and runs his finger over the broken plastic.

"Didn't know you kept it," he mumbles.

Mumbai. Three years ago. He saw it at a market he passed through and through it was fitting. Natasha had been delighted, even though he had managed to break off one of the deity's four arms before he could even give it to her.

Her hand comes to rest lightly on his forearm, and he tenses up. He knows what she wants. She wants him to look at her, wants him to recognize her. He wants that, too, he wants that more than he has wanted anything in his whole life. He takes a breath, steeling himself, before letting his gaze move from her hand, up along her arm and finally to her face. He sees the same hopeful glimmer in her eyes that he feels inside, too, and he takes in her red hair, her eyes, her cheekbones, the swell of her lips, her nose, the line of her neck, her build, her smell, her energy.

And he recognizes nothing.

He breaks eye contact, but not before seeing her deflating a little, too. He swallows the painful disappointment and stares down at his scuffed sneakers. Thomas's sneakers. The relief of recognizing the little key chain is gone, and he feels so defeated. He presses his hand over his eyes. He knew this was going to happen, _knew_ he hadn't miraculously been cured, but hope is a cruel thing, and Clint has always been a little too willing to let it in.

Natasha's hand wraps around his arm and pulls him up. He goes, too tired to resist, and she leads him by the hand across the street. She lets go of him before they reach the lobby and the security guards there. It's only when he gets inside that he realizes how cold he really is, and a belated shiver runs through him as he crosses his arms tightly over his chest. Natasha presses the elevator button and Clint looks around while they wait. He hasn't been in the public areas for so long, not since before this all started, and has it always been this big? Someone calls out from across the lobby, and fuck, Clint ducks his head at the painful screech in his ears. Natasha whisks him into the elevator that thankfully chooses this very moment to arrive.

When the doors slide close and the elevator starts to move, she waits a few seconds, then makes a slow, deliberate motion with her hand. She has to do it again for Clint to catch on. Her call sign. She's making her own call sign. A moment later one of the spotlights in the ceiling glows brighter and focuses on her. She's giving him another proof of identity. Clint nods and tries to give her a smile that will pass as somewhat genuine. She doesn't smile back, she just looks softly sad, and maybe this isn't Natasha after all, because Natasha's sadness isn't soft, it comes with hard edges and sharp teeth. He rubs at his temples. Stop it. It's her. Who else would have that ugly little thing, and also, remember the Stark/JARVIS team? They're too good to let just anyone into the inner sanctum. It's her.

The elevator makes a soft 'ding' and the doors slide open. Clint is relieved to see they're at his floor. He's really not feeling up to facing the others just yet. Natasha sweeps her hand over the panel at the first set of doors and the locks click quietly. Biometric recognition. Yet another type of identification. All of it for his benefit, no doubt, because JARVIS would normally have opened the doors for her without that.

Clint trails her silently down the corridor and everything is wrong. He wants to feel grateful and safe, and he _should_ , knowing Natasha is here, but he doesn't. He doesn't feel anything. His step falters and he blinks in surprise as Natasha and the floor ahead starts tilting. Sluggishly at first, then with more speed, and suddenly the wall smacks him in the face.

Ouch. That _hurts_.


	8. Chapter 8

Clint wakes slowly and with a head that has declared Jihad on him. It's throbbing with a deep, dark, horrible kind of pain that makes his brain feel three sizes too big for his skull. He shifts, tries to find a way to hold his head that doesn't hurt, and that little movement apparently alerts the universe that he's awake. And since it never seems to think he has suffered enough, it chucks a Mack truck of nausea at him. In seconds he's hanging over the edge of the bed heaving and his head explodes in a supernova of pain as his stomach does its best to turn itself inside out. He presses his hand to the side of his head as hard as he can, tries to counteract the pressure from within, tries to keep his brain from turning into a ruined, squelchy mess that will run out through his ears and join the mess he's made on the floor. But it doesn't help one bit, nothing helps, the pain just goes on and on and on. He feels hot and cold and sick, and god, there's no end to it, he thinks through a flash of unreasonable panic, the pain is never going to stop, _never_.

The sound of movement close by pierces through the pain, and he manages to lift his head a fraction. The drab daylight hurts his eyes, but he forces himself to keep them open and take in the room. It looks like one of the medical treatment rooms in the tower, but who the hell knows, they look the same everywhere, so that's not a given. He pushes himself backwards on the bed as two people approach. A man dressed like a doctor and a woman. Clint's focus zooms in on the syringe in the man's hand, and for a second he manages to shove the pain aside, because nononono, there's no way in hell he's letting some stranger shoot him up with god knows what. He rolls over to get to his feet, aiming to get the bed between them as a buffer, but he misjudges and falls over the side of it. He hits the floor with a thud that takes his breath away. Instinct has him scrambling to his hands and knees, but that's when the pain catches up with him again. He crumples back onto the floor, holding his head with both hands, because the pain is blinding, it's deafening. From above, grating, screeching voices assault him, and the words burrow into his aching brain like maggots. Then there are hands on his back, hands on his arms, and he tries to fend them off one-handed, because if he lets go of his head completely it will break, crack wide open, he's sure of it.

But his feeble attempts don't seem to help, and Clint feels them pull at him, trying to get him to his feet. He tries to push himself backwards, into the small space of darkness under the bed, because small and dark is safe, he can hide there, but the hands on him won't let him, he's pulled back out, and he flails, tries to resist. Clint doesn't know what he did wrong this time, doesn't know why he's being punished. Pleading never works, only serves to make him angrier, so Clint bites down on the pleas that crowd in his throat.

The hands on him stop pulling at him, stop trying to move him. Clint knows better than to think it's over, so he presses his cheek into the cold floor tiles and curls up, tries to make himself as small a target as possible. Something touches his face and he jerks his head back. The iron grip around his brain tightens like a bear trap closing, and thinks dimly that his father must have cracked his head open this time, like he always said he would, he must have, because how else would he get his fist inside to hurt Clint like this. He hears himself wailing and knows he has to stop. Don't make a sound. Don't move. Maybe he'll forget Clint is here. Maybe he'll forget that Clint is stupid and clumsy and does everything wrong. It never happens, he always remembers, but Clint never stops hoping.

Suddenly the room goes silent around him, blissfully silent, and the only sound Clint hears is his own pulse in his ears. The pain moves with it, rises and falls like a breathing, living thing, and he silently starts counting to one hundred. It's a nice and even number and it sometimes works when he's trying to distract himself from pain of various kinds. At one hundred he will open his eyes, it's usually safe by then, but the prospect doesn't really appeal to him, so he counts slowly, lingering on each number. Somewhere around fifteen he loses track of which number he's at. He tries to find the thread again, but the numbers have become elusive. Slippery. He worries about that for a moment, until he realizes that the pain has taken a step back. A _huge_ step back.

The touch on his forehead is back, and this time he doesn't fight it, because it's light and cool against his overheated skin. With every passing second the pain recedes further, and eventually he dares stop cradling his head quite so tightly. Yeah, he still hurts, but it's secondary to the warm lethargy that is settling over him, and it tells him they must have injected him with whatever was in that syringe at some point. He can't pinpoint when they did it, but it doesn't matter now, it's done and for the life of him he can't understand why he opposed it so much, because whatever they gave him, it's _heaven_.

The drugs drain the tension from his body, leaves it feeling loose and heavy. He blinks slowly up at the woman who crouches next to him. Keeping her in focus takes effort, but he eventually realizes she's holding something in her hand, showing him. It takes even longer for the slowing gears in Clint's brain to lock and identify it as the little blue Kali keychain. She runs a finger under her silver necklace and brings the arrow out from under her collar and shows it to him. Clint clumsily makes her call sign, and JARVIS lights her up.

He nods, then nods again, because he's suddenly not sure he actually did it the first time. The pain is nothing but a dull pressure now, and he lets Natasha and the man help him to his feet and then back onto the bed. He's kind of thankful for their help, because he discovers he has very little coordination left. Fentanyl, he thinks muzzily as he is lowered down and tucked in. Or hydromorphone. Or Tramadol, and wow, he _really_ isn't tracking anymore, because suddenly the room is pleasantly dim, and Natasha is seated in a chair next to the bed with a paperback in her hands.

Sleep presses down heavily on him, wraps him in warm arms, but he tries to stay awake, because he doesn't want to wake up like that again, never again, and he doesn't want to have to stick the Natasha label onto another stranger. He's tired of it. It's _hard._ Not something he ever want to get used to. He wants _his_ Natasha, and the ache inside apparently doesn't respond quite as well to opioids as physical pain, because distantly he registers that tears are leaking from his eyes again. But before he can gather enough wits about him to care, he's asleep.

'* '* '*

Next time he wakes, it's to considerably less pain and a low-volume discussion that grates at Clint's ears and nerves. He doesn't open his eyes, because he's warm and sleepy and comfortable, and going back to sleep seems like a lovely thing to do. So he tries, but he's not successful, the sound of their voices can't be shut out. Finally he can't stand it any longer.

"Will you shut up, all of you," he mumbles hoarsely. He licks his lips with a tongue that feels too thick for his mouth.

A second later, a woman is at his side. She does the Kali-necklace-spotlight thing, and Clint manages a tired nod. Natasha. Check. She watches him intently, and he gets a diffuse feeling that there's something weird about the perfectly neutral look on her face, but it's hard to tell. As long as he's known her she's been a master at showing only what the world to see, but he used to be able to read her pretty well. Now, well, now he doesn't even remember what she looks like, much less what her minimal tells look like. He simply doesn't know her like he used to. He swallows around the tightness in his throat. He might never again know her like he used to.

She watches him for another couple of seconds, then she starts talking. She keeps her voice down, but it's still dissonant and sharp in all the wrong places and Clint winces. It's just a short sentence, a few scrambled words, and when she finishes she looks at him like she's expecting an answer. He frowns at her, oddly hurt that she would do that do him, knowing how it bothers him. Natasha waits, and waits, and then waits some more. Clint doesn't know what she wants, and when he gets tired of the staring game he tells her as much. Natasha looks at him for another few seconds, then pats his arm and retreats to her chair. He's not sure if he imagines the flash of disappointment in her eyes.

There's still a hint of headache lingering, but the crippling pain is thankfully gone, and he takes in the room properly for the first time. Even through the haziness that still sticks to him, he recognizes the room as one of four in Stark's medical unit in the tower. The third one from the left. He had left a distinctive dent in one of the stainless steel cabinet doors a few months back (it's not his fault he reacts badly to certain medication, It's in his goddamn file, people) and apparently it has not been replaced yet. He pushes up on his elbow. His scalp itches and when he goes to scratch it he finds electrodes attached to his skin. A number of wires connect him to an EEC monitor.

A gaggle of people in white medical coats approaches, and Clint and does his best to relax as they poke and prod him while mumbling quietly amongst each other. He appreciates the consideration, but listening to them still gives him the same kind of feeling that sand between his teeth does.

One of the doctors, an older guy with a huge beard and ginger hair that seems to defy gravity waves his hand to get Clint's attention. He lifts his hand and brings his straight fingers to his thumb a few times in a blah-blah, talking-mouth gesture. Clint raises his eyebrow, but then the doctor points at Clint and does it again. So he wants Clint to talk. It's not the first time they've wanted to hear his scrambled transmissions, so okay. He's got a routine for this by now. He starts describing the room in detail. The white walls. The anatomical charts that Clint is sure are hung more for their esthetic appeal than anything else. The expensive-looking medical equipment (it's just a little depressing that he can identify most of them). The jar of brightly colored lollipops on the counter. Yes. Stark has jars of lollipops in his medical facility. Natasha told Clint when he first noticed it a while back that he's the reason they're there, but he just flat out refuses to believe that. He's a perfectly well-behaved patient. Most of the time, at least. _  
_

He looks at the doctor to see if he wants more. He gets a 'keep going' gesture, so goes on to describe the people in the room. Lots or notes are being made on lots of clipboards, but Clint reads nothing in their faces or stances that speak of something new or positive in his condition. Until suddenly every pair of eyes turn his way just as has has left the people-describing part of his spiel and has started ad-libbing.

He frowns uncertainly. "What?" The way they're looking at him makes something in his stomach tighten.

Beard-guy makes a rewind motion with his hand, then makes the talk sign while pointing at Clint. _Say that again_. He looks cautiously excited, and Clint glances over at Natasha again. She too is intently focused on him. Something just happened. He just doesn't know what.

He gets an impatient 'again' from the doctor.

"I was saying there's a lot of really weird Shield expense codes. You can, uh, you can write an expense report for a strap-on dildo used in the line of duty."

The doctors confer quietly by the door for a few minutes, then turn back to Clint. He's made to repeat the same stupid line over and over again, and he watches the tightly controlled excitement in the doctors' faces fade a little with each go. Something heavy and dejected settles in his stomach.

For a moment he almost thought something good was happening.

'* '* '*

A few hours later, when the city glows and sparkles in the darkness outside the window, they take him to be scanned. He has made sure to keep Natasha in sight at all times, even beckoned her with him to the bathroom, and asked silently for her to wait in the doorway while he took a piss. She had lifted her brow in wordless question and he'd felt so fucking stupid, but he doesn't know how long someone needs to be out of his line of sight for his brain to reset, and he had still felt unsettled and tired from the painkillers. He hadn't wanted to deal with another person. Not just yet.

But once he goes into the scanner, he has no choice but to let her out of his sight. She can't be in the room with him, and even if she was, he wouldn't be able to see her. He stares at the white surface above him as the machine fires up and tries to curb the claustrophobia that wants to pull him under. It's not easy, but he manages. He still comes out of the scanner shaky and exhausted.

Stark comes around later that evening. Clint knows it's Stark because Natasha - the third version of her since he woke up with that killer headache - makes Stark's call sign, and JARVIS lights the guy up. Stranger-Stark waves awkwardly and takes a hesitant step forward, then stops. Clint looks at Natasha, suddenly suspicious, because Stark really doesn't do hesitant, he's full speed ahead, all the way. Then the man walks straight up to him, looks him intently in the eye with all the focus of a laser beam, and pokes him in the forehead. Hard. Clint backs up a step and glares at him. Oh, it's Stark all right.

Stark grins and immediately starts playing charades. He's not good at it, and Clint is lost after '4 words'. Stark eventually seems to notice that his audience isn't following and his moving hands come to a halt in mid-air. He rolls his eyes and Clint shrugs apologetically. Stark makes a pistol shape with his fingers and points it at Clint's head, then makes a show of pulling an imaginary trigger. Clint is pretty sure Stark isn't telling him that he's planning on shooting Clint in the head, so when Stark stops and waits, he motions him on impatiently. Stark goes off again, gesturing wildly, and Clint holds up his hands, exasperated. This is going nowhere. Stark looks frustrated, then pulls out a Stark-pad and flips through a bunch of things on the screen before turning it towards Clint. It's a photo of the damn ray gun-thingie that put Clint in this situation. Clint nods. Okay.

Stark waves them with him back out into the hallway and leads them up one set of stairs and down another hallway. The room they enter is a mess of wires, computers, electronics, and the remains of a gutted MRI scanner, exactly like the one he got out of just hours ago. Stark sweeps his arm dramatically over the chaos of the room, then ruins the haughty impression by breaking into a grin and bouncing on his toes. He looks incredibly proud of himself.

Clint smiles uncertainly. He has no idea what he's looking at. Stark shows the ray gun again, makes like he's smashing it with a hammer, points at himself and then to the jumble of cobbled together stuff.

Oh. Stark has reverse-engineered something from the ray gun. Clint immediately perks up. This is the first time anything tangible has been presented to him, and if anyone can reverse this, it's… well, maybe not Stark, because he's a freaking genius, but he's not a neuroscientist, but Clint is beyond sure that the team Stark has assembled is the best of the best, and that if they have discovered how to fix his brain, Stark can make it happen.

Natasha doesn't join in the general grinning, and Clint's smile fades. She's too pragmatic to get ahead of herself, to celebrate before it's done, and she's absolutely right. This is experimental shit, all of it, and there's no telling if it's going to work. It might be a dead end. But Clint can't help hoping.


	9. Chapter 9

Natasha stays close all night and takes care to not move out of Clint's line of sight for more than a few moments at the time, so he only has to deal with one of her for the rest of the evening.

He sits in the kitchen and holds on to the Kali-figure while she dices tomatoes and onions and chops garlic for what he assumes is a pasta sauce. He's not particularly hungry, but he can't remember when he last ate a proper meal so eating is probably not a bad idea. He props his elbow on the table and rest his chin on his hand, watching her surreptitiously, trying to see if he can spot _anything_ that rings a bell. He knows she's aware of his eyes, but she doesn't make anything of it, she just concentrates on cooking and lets him watch in peace.

Five-foot six-ish. Around one-hundred and thirty pounds. She's backlit by the spotlights above the counter, so it's hard to make out her eye color, but he thinks hazel, or possibly green. Red hair. _Very_ red hair. A little longer than shoulder-length. Wavy. Soft-looking. He wonders suddenly if he would recognize the feel of it under his fingers, and he gets the overwhelming urge to find out, to touch it, but it still feels a bit like asking a stranger. It doesn't feel right.

Clint manages to eat half of what she puts on his plate, and she doesn't try to get him to eat more, she just clears the table and washes up a little. When Clint declines her wordless suggestion of a game of cards, Natasha produces a yoga mat and workout clothes from somewhere. She changes in the middle of the living room, sheds her jeans and shirt and bra on the floor. Modesty is something that doesn't survives long in their line of work, but Clint feels weirdly uncomfortable at the expanse of skin on display, and that's wrong, that's so painfully wrong, they have never been body-shy around each other.

He still can't remember what his Natasha looks like, but he knows she is a stunning woman, and so is this version of her, all pale skin and long lines of muscle and grace. She pulls on something soft-looking and elastic and settles on the mat to start in on her usual routine. Clint curls up under a blanket on the couch and watches her stretch and warm up.

She's limber like Clint won't ever be, no matter how much time he'd spend trying, and there's something slightly hypnotic about the smooth movements flowing one into another, and it doesn't take long for the fatigue to catch up with him for real. He fights it, because he knows he will have to contend with another stranger in his apartment if he closes his eyes for too long.

He suddenly realizes he still has no real sense of how long time she has to be out of his sight for that to happen, and he gets up and sits down Indian style next to her mat. She completes the form she's going through, then gracefully arranges her limbs into a lotus position in front of him. He scoots a little closer. It feels awkward to reach out and take her wrist, but he has learned a few things from hanging around two scientists for a while. One of those things is that you have to control your variables. He figures if he holds on to her, he will know for sure that it's the same person even if he doesn't recognize her when he opens his eyes.

She watches him neutrally, her pulse steady under his fingertips, as he takes a centering breath and closes his eyes. He starts to count. First to ten. He's certain that it's not enough time for his brain to reset, and when he opens his eyes he's right. She hasn't changed. Her eyes have closed and her face is relaxed, and he realizes that she probably thinks he's trying to meditate. He's fine with that. Twenty seconds. She's still there. Thirty. Forty. One minute. Two. Three. He gets to four minutes and forty seconds, and that's apparently the limit, because when he opens his eyes again someone else is sitting in front of him, and a one-second rush of alarm runs through him before he reminds himself that he's still holding on to her, it's the same person.

Some of the tension must leak through his grip, because new Natasha cracks her eyes a fraction. She watches him from under her lids, her gaze strangely intense, then extracts her wrist from his grip. She threads her fingers slowly with his, watching him the whole time, and he realizes she's looking for signs that he's not okay with it. He looks down at her smaller hand, and realizes this is the first time she has initiated physical contact of any kind since the evening he forgot her. Since he flipped the fuck out when she reached for him.

He suddenly feels like such an asshole. He's just been grateful that she has kept her distance, and not once has he thought about her side of things. He knows she has other friends, acquaintances, other personal connections, but he also knows that Phil and he have always been her closest allies, the only ones she trusts when she needs a safe place to just be. Be less than the Black Widow, less than the best of the best, less than forever vigilant. When she needs to be Natasha.

And now Phil is dead and Clint is out of her reach, and this must be hard on her, too. He squeezes her hand softly. He should really make an effort to be more approachable. It's the least he can do after all she's done for him.

He gets a chance when later she lies curled up and half-asleep on the couch that is big enough to let her stretch out to almost full length, yet still leave space for him to sit comfortably in the corner. He looks down at her feet where they rest a few inches from his leg, and he knows what he would have done had things been the way they should be. He lifts his hand, hesitates a moment, then places it lightly on her foot. It's a little cool, he feels it through her sock, and he presses it gently against his thigh to share some body heat. It feels a little stilted, but the lines of Natasha's body relax minutely, and that has to be some kind of victory, right?

But there's a limit to how far he can push himself. There's no way he'll be able to sleep with her this close, because a large part of him still has a hard time accepting the whole situation. That Natasha isn't a constant any longer.

Also, if he wakes up badly, chances are that finding a stranger in his personal space will not end well. Still, making the decision to leave Natasha on the couch and go to bed alone is hard, because he's so acutely aware that he'll wake up to another version of her.

But he can only procrastinate for so long, he essentially has a four-day sleep debt racked up, and the human body is merciless in collecting. He checks and double checks the locks to his bedroom before going to retrieve his knives from their usual places.

An upside of being this exhausted is that at least he doesn't dream.

'* '* '*

He wakes up late the next morning with yet another headache. Not the horrible kind from the day before, but a regular run-of-the-mill tension headache that has set up camp at the base of his skull and is sending out recon scouts towards his temples.

When he comes out of his bedroom, a woman is reading the newspaper in a recliner by the window, and she meets his eyes with a small smile and gives him a nod. Clint returns it warily. He's almost certain it is Natasha, because she wouldn't leave without letting him know, and even if someone had tried to force her to leave (bad, _bad_ idea), she would have made enough noise to wake up half of Manhattan.

He watches her reach for a manila folder on the table next to her. She tosses it casually across the room, then returns to her newspaper. Clint looks at the folder by his feet for a moment before crouching to pick it up. It contains a badly folded and creased city map of Rome (the Colosseum on the front is too distinctive to mistake for anything else) on which she has circled a location in the south-east part of the city. There is also a crudely drawn picture of an octopus.

Clint surprises himself by snorting out a little laugh. The location she has circled in red is a now-defunct Shield safehouse they stayed at a few years ago. That in itself isn't proof of anything, because Shield documents are all over the internet and it wouldn't surprise him if details of that operation in Rome are out there as well, but the octopus, wow, yeah, that's an aspect of that job that never made it into any reports. Natasha had calmly informed him that she would steep his balls in Sulfuric acid if he ever breathed a word about that part to anyone.

Needless to say, he had complied. Not even Phil had found out.

These two things are pretty compelling proof that it's Natasha sitting there, but his brain has acquired a distinct aversion to logic lately, which means he still spends a few seconds at war with himself. In the end he tries to look casual as he makes her call sign.

JARVIS lights her up and she wiggles her fingers at him without looking up from the newspaper and the crossword she has started in on.

'* '* '*

The first couple of days after his return to the tower, Natasha stays by his side most of the time, but every now and again she taps him on the shoulder and indicates the door with a nod. She has responsibilities that need taking care of, he knows that, and he tries very hard to be okay with it, but every single time the door closes behind her he falls back into exhausting hyper-vigilance.

He hates it, hates that he never gets a break, hates that the two feelings he seems to have left are unease and outright paranoid. But Natasha gets it, she _gets it_. She understands that using something once invalidates it for future use, because there's no such thing as privacy, and someone else could copy it if they happen to see it used.

Hello, paranoia, old friend.

But Natasha plays along. Every time Clint's brain resets, she brings him little things that only the two of them know the significance of to ease his mind. Like a pack of Big Red gum duct taped to a .22 magazine (Lake Tahoe), like a black envelope with a broken key and a condom (Sakhalin, Russia), like a comic book with pages 5, 6, 9, 10, 17, 22, and 31 dog-eared (his Shield serial number, with each number expressed as the sum of the actual number and the previous one in the sequence).

Natasha is quite simply ace at coming up with proofs of identity. But she still wears the face of a stranger, the face of numerous strangers, and he finds that telling her things gets harder and harder.

So he stops.

'* '* '*

He's been slacking off on his workouts, hasn't been in the gym or on the range for weeks. He knows he should go, that his skills and strength need regular maintenance, but he hasn't had the energy to care much about anything lately.

After a while, Natasha doesn't care, either.

Doesn't care that he's not interested in leaving his apartment, that is, and she drags him down to the gym and proceeds to pummel the shit out of him. That makes him care. Self-preservation is one hell of a strong motivator. And if he doesn't count the bruises and the nose-bleed, he actually does feel better afterwards, so the next day he picks up his usual routine. He suffers several days of sore muscles and various aches before his body gets with the program again, but he figures he deserves that and more for being stupid enough to get lazy in the first place.

He decides to dial his dependency on Natasha down, to unchain her a little, because he knows she values her me-time highly, and seriously, he needs to start taking charge here. He needs to shape his own life, his own future, and taking a small step towards some kind of independence seems like a good place to start.

But since when do things go according to plan in his life? Never, that's when. The first time he tries to venture out into the tower on his own he doesn't even get out of the elevator before he's crumbling under what he's pretty sure is a full blown anxiety attack. He assumes JARVIS alerts someone to his meltdown, because not long thereafter the elevator doors slide open and Clint promptly freaks out some more, because it isn't Natasha with her water-proof identification schemes standing there. It isn't a woman, it's two guys.

He's fairly certain he lost some time there, because the next thing he knows he's alone again, cowering in the corner, and he's so cold, so very cold. There's no way of knowing if JARVIS had recommended that they back off or if they had reached that conclusion themselves, and frankly, Clint doesn't care, he's just grateful they're gone.

He makes it over to the button panel on his knees and presses what he thinks is his floor number and hopes JARVIS understands where he wants to go. It seems he does, because when the doors open, Clint is on his floor.

When he stumbles out of the elevator he sees that there are droplets of blood on the floor. There are smears of it on his hands.

'* '* '*

Natasha brings a guest the next morning. A furry, four-footed guest that greets Clint with a wagging tail and a tennis ball in his mouth.

Clint spends a long time on his knees with Bouncy pretty much in his lap, on the receiving end of a lot of excited doggie kisses. Clint soaks in the warmth and closeness of another living being, because until now he hadn't realized how much he misses those easy, casual touches that used to be part of his life. He buries his face in Bouncy's fur and sits there until the dog gets impatient and starts squirming in his embrace. He releases Bouncy and glances up at Natasha. She looks amused, but also kind of happy, and maybe it's because Clint is smiling. For the first time in a long time it doesn't feel like he has to force it.

Together they move the living room furniture out of the way, and Bouncy gets an hour of running around chasing the yellow ball as they toss it to one another. Clint is glad the hardwood floor Stark has put in is of top quality and improbably resistant to marks, because every time Bouncy tries to make a sharp turn in his attempt to catch the ball, he slides sideways and his claws scratch for purchase on the slippery finish. Clint finds himself talking as he plays with Bouncy. It's mostly stupid nonsense, the kind of talk he would be embarrassed to admit to in normal circumstances, but you know what? It's nice. Easy. He doesn't have a lot of nice or easy things in his life right now, so he indulges in it.

It's Bouncy that gets him out of the tower for the first time in almost two weeks. Clint really, _really_ doesn't want to head out, but Bouncy needs to go and unless Clint wants to spend some time on his knees cleaning his floors he better get his ass outside. Natasha doesn't need words to convey that message.

They're just about to step out onto the street when she stops him with a light hand on his arm. She holds a headset. It's black and sleek and Clint stands still while she pushes his hood back and positions it over his ears. She fiddles with something, and suddenly Clint's world goes all but silent.

He blinks stupidly at her, not sure what just happened, then it hits him and he wants to groan at his own stupidity, because seriously, why hadn't he thought of this like three months ago? Noise cancelling technology. Why hadn't _anyone_ thought of it?

She takes a small step back and asks a thumbs-up/thumbs-down question, and he gives her an emphatic thumbs-up. They're great, more than great, they block out sounds better than any headset he has ever used, even Shield tech. He knows it's highly likely that Stark has tinkered with these to get them just perfect for Clint, which also means they're probably a whole hell of a lot better than anything on the market right now.

Natasha pulls his hood back up and fusses a little with it so it lies just right, then snakes her hand under his arm as they step out into the cold. She holds on daintily, and Clint hunkers down a little more in his army surplus jacket. He feels just a little out of place next to her, with his hair just a bit too long to behave and a faceful of scruffy stubble. He hasn't shaved for a few too many days. He's Tom Hanks in Cast Away next to her Audrey Hepburn.

It's cold. New York City has finally surrendered to winter, and during the dark hours of the morning Cline had watched from his window how two inches of snow had accumulated on the roofs around the tower. It's pretty.

The three of them walk along Park Avenue and all the way down Broadway to the Battery. It's an hour and a half of traffic and flashing digital billboards and a large number of noisy people that Natasha navigates with absolute calm. Clint doesn't lift his gaze off Bouncy more than absolutely necessary (which is pretty exactly once every three minutes to make sure Natasha stays the same), because even though the headset works beautifully, the movement all around is disorienting.

Traffic and road salt has long since turned the snow to brown slush on the streets and the sidewalks, but in the park it is still mostly white and pristine. Clint lets Bouncy off the leash, and the dog quickly makes a new friend in the park, a yappy little Dachshund a third of his size that promptly starts bossing him around like nobody's business.

Clint backs off and throws snowballs for the dogs to chase while Natasha exchanges pleasantries with the owner. At one point Natasha turns and makes a gesture in Clint's direction, and the other woman gives him a friendly smile and a wave. He returns it and hopes he's not expected to walk over and contribute with anything else. Seems he's not, because Natasha smoothly shifts the attention back to herself by 'accidentally' dropping the leash in her hand and then faking slipping in the snow when she goes to pick it up. There's a squeal and laughter and Clint is forgotten as the owner helps Natasha to her feet.

The Dachshund and its human eventually leave, and the three of them continue down to the waterfront and around up to the Whitehall Terminal and the Staten Island ferries. Bouncy trots next to them and as the afternoon matures into early evening Clint realizes that he doesn't really want to go back to the tower yet, but Natasha has started looking cold, her nose is red, she has crossed her arms tightly in front of her and stuffed her gloved hands in the pits of her arms. Clint finally takes pity on her and indicates that they should head back. Probably for the best, he can't really feel his toes any longer.

A few blocks up Natasha stops at a small coffee shop and leaves Clint with Bouncy outside while she goes in to get them both something warm to drink. The moment the door closes behind her Clint slides the headset off and casually tries to keep an eye on the people coming and going around him. He's glad he's bundled up the way he is, with a fluffy scarf and the hood of his jacket to hide behind. It's unlikely that someone is going to recognize him if they just happen to wander by, but it could happen.

As he waits Clint stomps his feet to try to get some warmth back in them. One minute. Bouncy stands patiently by his side. Two minutes. It hadn't looked like there were all that many customers in there, but when Clint's internal counter approaches three minutes and she hasn't come back out he starts feeling decidedly uneasy. Bouncy seems to pick up on it, because he nudges Clint's hand with his head just as someone knocks on the inside of the shop window. He looks over his shoulder and sees Natasha. Relief washes over him, and he lifts his hand and gives her a small wave. Seems she's got a timer of her own ticking away.

Before another four minutes are up, she is back with two steaming cups of coffee, one in each hand. She makes an executive decision that they've done enough walking for one day, and Clint wraps his cold fingers around the hot cup as she tries to flag down a cab. It takes a while to find one that takes Bouncy, but eventually they're out of the cold and on their way back to Midtown.

Clint sits in the dark of the cab with Bouncy's head in his lap and wonders idly if dognapping warrants jail time.

'* '* '*

(Next chapter Tony decides it's time to bring Clint into the fix-the-brain game)


	10. Chapter 10

Then comes the day when Stark decides it's time to stop inventing and finally bring Clint into the brain-fixing game. _Finally_. Only, Clint doesn't feel the relief he expected he would when he sits in the miming sessions that are arranged in the days leading up to D-day. They're all trying their best to give him as much information as possible, but most of it is too complicated to mean much to him, and it doesn't help that half of his brain is stuck on the fact that yes, there's a chance the procedure might fix him, but there's probably an non-negligible risk that it might not, that it might actually make things worse, because if it was easy and straightforward it wouldn't have taken them four months to figure it out.

But he's in good hands. He knows he is. Everyone is acutely aware of what's at stake here. He just hopes that Banner has been on his toes during all of this, because as much as Clint trusts their combined intelligence and perseverance and sheer fucking tenacity, an unchecked Stark has a way of throwing caution to the wind, trusting fully that no matter what, he'll solve the problem. And he usually does. But not always on the first attempt, and this is a time when a home-run is needed on the first strike. Luckily, Banner is the voice of reason, the devil's advocate to Stark's full-tilt, bulldozer confidence. So Clint is going to be fine. They wouldn't go ahead if they didn't think there was at least a decent chance it would work. They wouldn't risk it.

They _wouldn't_.

*' *' *'

On the morning of the procedure he sits on the couch in his living room and waits, palms pressed together between his knees, headset lying next to him. The tech is a mixed blessing, because while it dampens voices amazingly, it also filters out just about every other sound, and he uses his ears almost as much as his eyes when he's in the field. Sure, he's in the tower, safe and sound, and he doesn't really need to stay vigilant at all times, but he's been trying to tell his limbic system that for a while now, and it has still to take.

He glances at one of the analog desk clocks that mysteriously appeared in pretty much every room a few weeks after this all had started, and sternly informs his knee that bouncing is not allowed.

Come on, people. Let's get this over with.

Despite expecting it, he startles at the knock on the door when it finally comes. Natasha gives him a tight smile and leads him down to the floor where Stark's prototype device is being built. Clint slides the headset on.

At first he doesn't even think it's the same room, it looks so different. All the machine parts and electronic parts that had been scattered on the floor and on the workbenches have now been assembled into something that looks vaguely like one of the brain scanners he's become so chummy with, only a _lot_ bigger and a lot less streamlined. Electrical wires, wrapped in bundles as thick as his wrist, snake across the floor from a wall full of floor-to-ceiling computer racks. Cooling fans hiss. A thousand little LEDs blink red and green and blue on monitors and control panels. Clint has to grudgingly give HYDRA some credit, because they must have some pretty brilliant guys working for them in order to fit this kind of technology into the sleek, hand gun-sized device that had landed him in this shitty situation.

A large group of people are crammed into the room. Some of them are rapidly clicking away on computer keyboards, some are bent over open access hatches with tools in hand, some are arguing around a bunch of slowly rotating holograms showing circuitry. As he and Natasha step fully into the room, talking stops and every head turns their way. Clint's step falters a fraction as he is caught by the ridiculous urge to step in behind Natasha, to let her shield him. The no-talking is probably for his benefit, but it just makes the whole thing even more uncomfortable and weird, and Clint doesn't want to be there. He wants to be pretty much anywhere else than here. He doesn't get the chance to start panicking about that, because a moment later a man calls out what's clearly an order to get back to work, and everyone returns to what they were doing.

The guy carefully steps over toolboxes and power cords and makes his way to them. He points at the headset, then gives Clint a wide grin and points at himself. Ah. Stark. Clint's guess is verified when Natasha taps his shoulder to get his attention and then makes Stark's sign. Another man makes his way towards them, and this one makes his own sign. Banner. Clint glances at Natasha who gives a tiny nod.

Clint shoots them both a tentative smile and gets two in return. Stark's is excited and exhausted. Banner's is just plain exhausted. Stark pulls Natasha a few steps to the side and starts talking, but Banner's attention remains on Clint. He looks like he wants to say something, but yeah, that's kinda the crux of the problem, isn't it, buddy, so in the end he just gives Clint another tired smile and pats his arm before going back to his computer.

Stark concludes his conversation with Natasha and turns back to Clint. He puts his hands firmly on Clint's shoulders and looks him directly in the eye.

His gaze is intense, as is the message in them. _This_ _ **will**_ _work and you_ _ **will**_ _be fine. I won't have it any other way._ There's more lurking in there, but it's murkier and harder to read, and before Clint can figure it out, Stark gives him a firm slap on the arm and turns on his heel to return to whatever he was doing before they arrived. As he leaves, he says something over his shoulder that makes Natasha roll her eyes.

Clint and Natasha are shown to another room, a medical examination room, and he's made to change into a hospital gown. It's one of those stupid open-back ones, but at least he gets a pair of pants to wear, so all in all, it could have been worse. What comes next is literally hours and hours and _hours_ of basic and not-so-basic tests. He's already been through most of them in the past few days, but he'll gladly do them ten more times if it means an end to all of this. They weigh him (he sees Natasha frown at the number on the digital scales, and he knows it too low, he's lost muscle mass in the past few months), they measure his blood pressure, take his temperature and about ten vials of blood. He gets to pee in a cup and do a string of close-your-eyes-and-point-at-your-nose kind of exercises that he passes with flying colors. Then comes another brain scan in one of the un-modified scanners down the hall. They insist on moving the bed rather than letting him walk, which is ridiculous, but Clint is determined to be as cooperative as possible, so he lets them.

As usual the scan takes approximately forever to complete, so when he comes out Natasha has had time to change. She is prepared, and her identity is established within seconds. He stares at the light fixtures overhead as they roll the bed back into the examination room.

Please let this be the last time, please, please, _please._

After the scan he gets fitted with EEG electrodes all over his scalp and ECG electrodes on his chest, but the leads aren't hooked up just yet. Natasha waits patiently by the door, out of the way of the medical staff, but still in Clint's direct line of sight. She looks grim, arms crossed and mouth set in a hard line. Everything about her is broadcasting _don't mess with me right now_ , and it's like a physical force field around her, making people give her a wide berth as they move around her. He suspects he's radiating something similar, because most people look like they would rather juggle live hand grenades than spend any significant time in his personal space.

Clint tries to distract himself by identifying as many items as possible in the room that he could use as a weapon. There are reassuringly many. He glances up to see Natasha casually twirling a scalpel between her fingers. When their eyes meet her mouth quirks up with a dark smirk, and there is no doubt she has picked up on what he's doing. He snorts, amused, but when the doctor turns to look over his shoulder at the source of his amusement, the scalpel has vanished and Natasha is back to stony. Clint ducks his head and grins.

Then a nurse approaches, and his amusement dies. He glances up at Natasha again and kicks himself mentally when he catches himself doing it. He's not six years old, he doesn't need constant reassurance. But then he looks back to the nurse and has to admit that right now he could kinda use a little reassurance, because there's an IV kit on the tray.

They're going to sedate him.

For some reason he'd been under the assumption that he'd be awake for this, but it seems they're either going knock him out completely, or give him enough happy juice to make him sleepy and pliant. Neither options appeal to him. In fact, they both freak him the fuck out, and every cell in his being wants to look at Natasha again, wants to know that this is okay, that she sees no danger here, because she is his first and last line of defense. He forces himself not to, forces himself to trust that Natasha will intervene if something isn't right.

The nurse, a ridiculously young woman who looks like she's barely out of high school, stops a few steps away and waits until she establishes solid eye contact with Clint before moving in and placing her tray on the rolling metal table next to the bed. She's got more sense in her than most of the people who prod and poke and move around him. Clint likes her better already. But he doesn't like her enough to want her anywhere near his veins with that needle. Sadly, he knows that if he wants any kind of normal life he needs to let them do what they feel they have to do, so with some difficulty he tamps the anxiety down and pushes his sleeve up.

She's good at what she does, and it's done in a matter of seconds. She pats him lightly on the arm in a _good boy_ kind of gesture that almost makes Clint smile, because he's gotta be what? Ten, twelve years her senior. As she leaves the room he flexes his arm and touches the tape that secures the line to his skin. It's not connected to anything yet, but he has no doubt that it's just a matter of time.

But a matter of time turns out to be a hell of a long time. Another two and a half hours, to be exact, during which people come and go at what seems like random intervals. Natasha has seated herself on top of one of counters by the wall. Her feet swing slowly, calmly, but where she is zen personified, Clint can feel his own nerves getting tighter and tighter with every minute that passes. Come on. Come on. Come _on_. To kill time he spends a few minutes signing one-handed dirty words at life in general. He knows they're just as incomprehensible to the rest of the world as his words are, so he goes for the worst ones he has ever learned.

Then more people arrive in the room and the change in energy tells him it's show time.

Three people descend on him and start attaching wires to both the EEG and ECG electrodes. He's hooked up to a number of machines that light up and start to beep and flash little lights. He gets an Oxymeter clipped to his index finger, and then two bags of clear liquid are hung from the IV stand next to the bed.

He hears the soft sound of Natasha's sneakers hitting the floor as she hops down from the counter top. Clint tenses and turns his head sharply towards her, but there's nothing in her body language or her eyes that speaks of danger. She unceremoniously shoulders in between two of the many people buzzing around Clint and lays claim to a spot near his shoulder. The dark looks she gets from the displaced doctors and nurses are ignored.

A few seconds later Clint is hooked up to the IV. Okay. So, they're at t minus a few minutes now. He lies back and watches the ceiling tiles as the room clears out around him. Natasha doesn't move. Someone dims the lights on the way out. Silence falls, save for a few random beep from machines. For the first time since they arrived Clint doesn't feel cornered and crowded, but that relief is small and pale, because they're going to mess with his brain in just a little while now, and he doesn't want them to. He really doesn't. A magic wand would be so much nicer.

A magic wand. My kingdom for a magic wand.

But magic wands are hard to come by, and even if they weren't, Clint's little kingdom is pretty damn run down, not worth a lot to anyone, so the situation probably wouldn't be any different. He'd still be screwed.

He lies there and tries to feel any effect of whatever is dripping into his bloodstream, but the only thing he feels is cold. The bed dips as Natasha sits on the edge of it. Her fingers curl around his. He knows her thoughts are circling the same topic as his. There are no guarantees here. He might wake up fine, with his brain up and running again. He might wake up just the way he is now, damaged. He might wake up more damaged, or not himself. He might not wake up at all. One small relief is knowing that if things go to shit in a bad way, if he comes through it a drooling vegetable, Natasha will be there for him. Though not in a way the others would understand, but he doesn't expect them to. She understands and that's what counts.

He reaches up, curls his fingers around the back of her neck lightly and pulls her closer. She comes without resistance. He doesn't stop until their foreheads touch, until they're too close for eye-contact and he closes his eyes. He suspects he doesn't have a lot of time, so he better get this out.

But finding the words is more difficult than he thought it would be.

"Thanks," he tells her, because that seems like a good place to start, an easy place to start. "For putting up with me. Not just now, I mean always. I've been told I'm a bit of an ass sometimes." He sighs. "And speaking of being an ass, I'm sorry I took off like that. It was a shit move, I just…"

Yeah. He just what? He had left her behind. _Chosen_ to leave her behind. The one thing he had promised never to do.

"I'm sorry, Nat. I truly am. For a lot of things."

He feels her fingers run lightly down the side of his face, and not looking makes it easier to push past the barrier that her shape-shifting creates, it lets him settle into her touch in a way he hasn't been able to for a long time. He realizes that the drugs are probably starting to kick in, and that he likely has them to thank for that, but who cares, at this point he'll take what he can get.

There are so many things he would like to say, so many _difficult_ things, but then suddenly she's pulling back and no, please, Natasha, please don't. Please. He tightens his fingers even though he knows it's the absolute wrong thing to do, but he can't help himself, he doesn't want her to go. Then he realizes that she isn't moving away, she's just shifting to lie down next to him on the bed, and he almost starts to cry from the intensity of the relief, because he if this ends badly, he wants the last thing he knows to be her.

She arranges herself carefully around all the medical equipment he's hooked up to and settles down against his side. He presses his forehead against her shoulder, hides his face.

"I'm scared," he admits, and his voice comes out unsteady. "Nat, I'm really, _really_ scared."

The way her hand comes to rest on his hair lets him know she understands if not his words, then the emotion behind them.

The way she holds on lets him know she's as scared as he is.

*' *' *'

Clint doesn't remember much of the procedure itself, it's mostly a vague impression that he hadn't been completely knocked out. What he does remember is coming out of the haze of drugs feeling sick and disoriented and fundamentally _wrong_.

He's sitting up in the bed, hunched forward and throwing up before he's even fully awake, and there are people all around him, hands steadying him and holding a pan in front of his face. Wrong. Everything is wrong. His skin is the wrong size, his bones feel out of place, even his thoughts are the wrong shape, and god, the high-pitched buzzing of mosquitos around his ears is driving him crazy. He hates those fuckers, especially when any movement is a risk to the entire op and has to lie there for hours and hours and let them feast on him.

Everything spins around him. He lifts his head and tries to pull his surroundings into focus, and he almost manages, _almost_ , but just then something clatters to the floor, and it's loud and sharp, and then everything is loud and sharp, and he hunches over, arms over his head. Someone attempts to coax him to lie back down, but he shoves at the hands, doesn't want them to touch him. But nothing is working right, and all he manages is a kind of feeble flailing against something that feels like sandpaper but turns out to be the front of someone's scrubs. They're blue. Blue. Blue. His mind gets inexplicably, stupidly stuck on the color, then there's a taste of metal at the back of his mouth that isn't blood. It isn't anything he can identify, but something about it is familiar and not in a good way. He twists and sees the syringe being emptied into the access port of his IV. He tries to rip the IV from his arm, but his eye-hand coordination is as fucked up as everything else, and he misses by a wide margin.

*' *' *'

He thinks he sleeps.

He thinks someone talks to him.

He thinks he sleeps again.

*' *' *'

Clint lies curled up half-asleep under warm blankets and with a soft pillow under his head. He is dimly aware that he must be under the influence of something pretty heavy-duty, but he doesn't care. He doesn't care that he hears people in the room, he doesn't care that he has no idea where he is. And best of all? He doesn't care that he doesn't care.

It's pretty damn nice to not care.

Through closed lids he can sense daylight. Wherever he is, there are windows. He hopes they're large. He likes large windows. His mind shows with miles and miles of farmed fields outside, yellow wheat and endless rows of dark green potato tops. He sees pale, drying cornstalks that rustle like paper, and it's like they're trying to talk, to tell him secrets that have long been buried in the soil.

The light changes gradually and he slowly becomes more aware of things around him, of himself, his body. He flexes his fingers without opening his eyes and this time they feel like his own, like they fit with the rest of his body. His thoughts are still moving in slow-motion, but they feel like his own thoughts. By the time he convinces himself to open his eyes, his brain has started processing at a slightly higher speed. He squints at the daylight that falls in through the window, disappointed to see that it's a regular sized window. From his spot in the bed he sees not farmland and clear skies, but concrete and glass and steel, framed by low-hanging clouds.

New York.

When he looks closer at the room he recognizes one of the medical suites in the tower.

What did he do this time to end up here? He does an inventory on his body, and it doesn't feel like anything is broken or cut or otherwise damaged. In fact, he's not hurting at all. That could be the drugs, he reminds himself, because yeah, from what he can tell they're pretty damn potent.

It takes a while to get a firm grip on the threads of memory that leads him to the correct place.

Stark's device. The procedure.

Is it over? He decides it must be, because he's quite certain there would be more activity around him if it was still going on. So, let's count the blessings, he decides. One, it's over. Two, he's not dead. Three, he still feels sluggish and slow, but as far as he can tell there is no drooling going on and he's pretty sure he's not a vegetable. Just to make sure he wiggles his toes and watches the blanket move. He does it again. Good. Natasha won't have to put him down. That's good. Okay, Barton, back to counting. He was at… four? Yes. Four, five, six. Wait, what was he counting?

He quickly decides it's not worth the effort to try to remember, if it's important it will come back to him. Instead he tilts his head in the direction of the hushed voices he's been hearing all along. One male, two females stand by a desk at the other side of the room. Visual cues tell him it's a doctor, another doctor, and a nurse. He's more than content to just watch them for a while, and later he will blame the pharmaceuticals for the time it takes to realize that something is different. The sound is different. When it registers he fumbles with a hand at his ear. No headset. And he hears… human voices.

 _Normal_ human voices.

They're murmuring, speaking too quietly for Clint to pick out individual words, but what he can pick out is that there is no banshee screeching going on, no nails on blackboards, no microphone feedback squeal, just normal voices having a normal, low-volume conversation. He sits up in the bed. Fast. Too fast, and the room around him skews and rolls for a moment. When his head clears the male doctors is by the bed, and the nurse and the woman doctor are on their way to the door.

Clint looks up at the man. "I can hear you," he says stupidly.

The doctor holds a loaded syringe.

"No, don't. You don't have to—" Clint raises his hands clumsily, trying to ward off more drugs, because seriously, he's only just able to string together a sentence, and he needs to clear his head, because _voices_ , he hears voices.

He shares this with the doctor, then giggles and promptly slaps a hand over his mouth, because telling the man with the sedatives in his hand that he's hearing voices is maybe not the best thing to convince them to not shoot him up with more drugs, and he'd rather not have an antipsychotic cocktail added to whatever they're giving him. He's been on the receiving end of that once before, and thanks, but no thanks.

Something occurs to him, and he stops grinning. Is that even an issue? Saying that he can hear voices? Can they even understand him? The doctor hadn't reacted to the statement. Clint frowns and tries to shake the cobwebs from his brain. That was part of it too, wasn't it? Part of what Tony's tech was supposed to fix. He looks up at the doctor again, who is hesitating with the point of the needle hovering right by the IV access port.

"Can you… Do you understand me?" Clint asks. The syllables feel slippery, weirdly rounded in his mouth.

The doctor gives him a concerned frown.

"Do you understand me?" he asks again, this time taking care to enunciate properly.

The doctor answers, and fuck, Clint doesn't understand a word. It's like listening to a foreign language for the first time, and he feels sick. Physically sick. It didn't work. He still can't understand them, and they still can't understand him. He's still fucked up. Still stuck in this hell. A hand lands on his shoulder and he shoves it away. Get away, he wants to snarl, don't touch me, this isn't right, it's supposed to be okay, he's supposed to, god, he's supposed to be alright. He's supposed to be _fixed_. And he's not. Clint grasps at his hair, pulls at it in desperation. He feels short of breath, his whole chest feels tight and his blood has started pounding in his ears. This isn't right. It's not fair. It's not—

A sharp cry rings out, and Clint startles. The sharp sound of heels against the floor is heard and someone inserts herself between him and the doctor and plucks the syringe now inserted into the IV from the doctor's fingers. It goes flying across the room with an angry flick of her arm.

Her back is to Clint, an effective shield between him and the doctor, and even though he can't see her face and she never raises her voice, the anger comes through crystal clear. Clint's throat goes tight, because he knows this voice. He _knows_ it. The doctor takes a step back, then another one. He tries to get a word in, but Natasha talks right over him, her voice low and even and terrible, and the doctor finally turns on his heels and hurries out of the room. She doesn't move until the door closes fully behind him, then her shoulders relax a little, and she brushes her hands down her sides, like she's straightening her clothes after a scuffle.

When she turns, Clint doesn't know her face, and he knows that it should bother him so much more, it probably will once the drugs have worn off, but in this very moment all he can think is that small victories are victories, too, and beggars can't be choosers, and if this is all he's ever allowed, he will hold on to it with both hands and he will thank whatever deity is out there every day for the rest of his life. He manages to get to his knees and wraps his shaking arms around her and just fucking holds on, too desperately, too tightly, but he doesn't care, because he knows her voice.

Natasha's voice.


	11. Chapter 11

As he predicted, Clint has a bit of a meltdown when the drugs wear off later that night and he gets some time to process that no, he's not fixed, he's still stuck in the twilight zone that has become his life. Sure, he now recognizes voices, but he's still pretty much cut off from everyone else with no way of communicating.

He spends a long time crying miserably into his pillow after getting everyone to leave the room. It had taken some pretty strong insisting on his part, mainly consisting of snarling and pointing at the door and finally throwing things at their heads when they didn't comply. He thinks they had wanted to sedate him again, but fuck that, he's done being compliant. Natasha had tried to reason with him from across the room. She knows by now that he doesn't understand a word she says, but she had tried that thing that Coulson sometimes did when Clint was out of it, too strung out on drugs or too dazed from a concussion to understand much. Clint had always recognized the voice and the calming, reasonable tone, and had almost always responded well to it. But Natasha is no Coulson, and as relieved he had been to finally recognize her voice again, the placating quality had chafed at him, because he has every goddamn right in the world to be upset about this.

Someone had turned the overhead lights out as they left, and the room is dim. Clint curls up against the wall and clutches the blanket close to his chest. It's a poor substitute for the physical contact he suddenly craves and only serves to emphasize his misery, so he rolls onto his back and places his hands on the mattress on both sides of him. Jesus. He's all over the place, bouncing like a pinball between clingy and angry and overwhelmed and devastated. It's exhausting. He wants his life back, and yeah, that though sets off the waterworks again. He hopes there are no cameras in the room, but he suspects there are. He covers his face with his hands and hates everything with such intensity it almost rivals the misery that burns darkly in his chest. He hates it, hates being under constant supervision, hates feeling this raw and _brittle_. He wants to stop feeling like this. In fact, he wants to stop feeling, full stop.

Lucky for Clint, the human body can only sustain that kind of emotional intensity for so long, and eventually there are no more tears left in him, just fatigue and gray scale lethargy. His limbs feel heavy, and for a few minutes it's like every thought in his head has a Teflon coating, slipping out of his grip before fully formed, and it's such a quiet and welcome thing. It's not going to last, he knows that, but for now he's than willing to just go with it. The only thought that stands out is that he misses the safety of having something to defend himself with. But weapons are generally frowned upon in medical facilities, and anyway, they're probably worried he's going to do something stupid, because his bag with what was left of his weapons stash had magically disappeared a few hours after he returned to the tower.

He makes himself count the ways he could kill himself without fire power or a sharp blade if he wanted to. He comes up with quite a few. Not that he's going to do it, he promised he wouldn't. It's just… darkly comforting knowing that he could. That feeling leaves him with a gnawing sense of guilt and he's glad Natasha isn't in the room, because she has an uncanny and frankly unsettling way of knowing in which direction his thoughts are going. If she were to even suspect that this is something floating around in his head she would have him committed, no two ways about it. He wonders idly if they'd simply shove anti-anxiety medication down his throat and stash him somewhere with a soothing color scheme and nothing that could be used to off himself since it's not like they can sit him down and nag at him to _share_ what he's thinking and what he's feeling. It's one of the few silver linings he can think of, because it always feels like he's shedding his skin when they make him talk to shrinks. He hates shrinks. He's still borderline resentful for all the times Phil had made him go. Doesn't matter that Clint had usually been balancing on the edge those times (damn Phil and the way he always saw right through Clint); the cure had always been worse than the decease. He knows Natasha feels the same about psychologists, but she's a lot better at bullshitting them in a believable way, faking just enough emotion to make it credible while circumventing the real stuff. That gets her out of there much quicker than he does. He gets follow-up session after follow-up session, until he's too worn down by their questions and the long silences that are meant to give him time to verbalize stuff. He doesn't want to put words to any of the shitty things that roll around in his head, shapeless and ill-defined yet so acutely _there_. It makes shoving them down and out of the way that much more difficult.

He turns on his side and pulls the blanket up under his chin. He wishes for another one. The fuzzy one on his bed would be nice. It's warm, and he's cold. He eyes the many closets by the wall. Maybe there's another blanket in one of them. It wouldn't surprise him, because the room is more like a hotel room than a medical suite, with a comfy looking sitting group and a large flat screen TV on the wall. The medical equipment has been stowed away in cabinets or rolled out. It's quiet. He wonders if there's really no noise outside or if the room has been sound proofed. He had scouted the ways in and out of the room as soon as he had been able to stand up, and Natasha had wisely not interfered. Turns out the only exit that didn't involve scaling a glass façade some fifty floors off the ground was the door. And the likelihood that they would just let him just walk out was pretty slim. All in the name of keeping him safe, no doubt.

A cage is a cage is a cage, his mind feels the need to point out.

'* '* '*

Clint wakes with his heart hammering in his chest, cowering under the all-too thin blanket. The voice of his dad fades as he claws his way out of the dream. It's not until his pulse starts to come down that he manages to uncurl and take a few deep, slow breaths. He lies back and tries to relax as his body sorts itself out. He knows the shivery, unsteady feeling is temporary, a side-effect of the unchecked surge of adrenaline that is now burning itself out. He stares at the dark ceiling and waits. It'll take a minute. Two tops. He's well acquainted with the sensation. It's a completely different thing from the kind of adrenaline he experiences in the field, where it is a friend that sharpens his senses and his focus, makes him faster and stronger and smarter. That kind he loves. This? Not so much.

He squints at the clock that's projected onto the ceiling and discovers he hasn't slept more than two hours. He's still so very tired, but even when the jitters have passed he feels uneasy and going back to sleep with that feeling has proved a sure-fire recipe for more nightmares. He swings his legs over the edge of the bed. The floor is cold under his bare feet as he pads to the on suite bathroom. He looks sick under the harsh light, like he's on day five of a drinking binge. He runs his hand over the stubble on his face and sighs when he finds that, predictably, there's no razor in the cabinet. But there is toothpaste and a toothbrush, and he brushes his teeth gratefully. Towels are laid out and he takes a quick two-minute shower. He turns the water as cold as it will go and feels much better when he gets out from under the spray.

He waffles a bit about getting back into his used clothes, then decides to go commando under the hospital pants. He leaves the shirt off and returns to the bed. Natasha had left her deck of cards at the side of the bed, and Clint starts dealing cards for a game of solitaire. The sky is still dark outside, but he can see the first forerunners of dawn at the horizon, and in an hour or so the sun will be up. He flips through one cycle of the deck, then starts again, and he's halfway through the deck when he pauses.

The card in his hand is one of the black suites, and he can count six, seven, eight symbols. What catches his attention is that the number that's been nothing but a weird ever-changing scribble for so many months for a split second looks kinda familiar, like maybe that's what an eight is supposed to look like. Maybe? He stares at it, but the feeling is gone as soon as he consciously identifies it. With his heart beating hard he abandons the game of solitaire and flips through the deck, but none of the cards trigger that sense of recognition again.

But he had _almost_ recognized a number. The excitement that soars through him makes him giggle a little crazily, because apparently Clint Barton gets excited about things most people learn in kindergarten. He makes Natasha's sign twice and hopefully JARVIS will understand that he's calling for her. As he waits he starts flipping through the deck again. Nothing rings a bell. Another go. Nothing. Again. Nothing. He spreads the cards out on the bed, face up, and starts pawing through them.

There's a knock on the door and he looks up from the cards. Natasha peeks in and says something to him, and it's ingrained habit by now to tense up, expecting the sound to be unpleasant and harsh. But it's not. It's Natasha's voice. It's still her voice. He waves her in and points to the cards. She closes the door behind herself and comes to sit down on the edge of the bed. He points to the cards again and holds up one finger. He can't help to grin, because he had recognized one single card, he had recognized the number eight. The symbol that goes with the concept of 'eight' has been lost to him for so long, but he recognized it. The sensation had been so brief he hadn't been sure about it, but he is now. He _had_ recognized it, and maybe Tony's procedure works. He's a genius after all. Maybe things will get better.

He scans the cards again, rifles through them so rapidly they scatter across the bed. And there! He picks it up, waves it and beams at Natasha.

The number eight! Smooth and round and wonderful.

Natasha's smile is almost as bright as his own.

'* '* '*

The next couple of days Clint suffers persistent headaches and a number of spontaneous and profuse nosebleeds. They keep him in medical, but now that things have started to change, he isn't quite as unhappy about it as he had been right after the procedure. He keeps recognizing things over the next few days. Random things. A few more numbers, zero and twelve. Letters, D and P and O. For some unfathomable reason he recognizes the word 'undulating' when he scans a newspaper.

The first time he recognizes a spoken word in the midst of an incomprehensible sentence (Tony says 'food') Clint first doesn't believe his ears.

Then he proceeds to close the door on everyone but Natasha and bursts into tears.

It's annoying, bawling like a kid all the time. He feels like Ms. Wulff, one of the old bats at the orphanage, who had cried when watching news clips about kitties getting rescued from trees on TV. He reconsiders that analogy when he remembers that she had forced pieces of bitter, acrid soap into his mouth for cussing, and made him chew and swallow. She had told him when he threw up that she was doing it for his sake, that she was helping him clean out the dirt inside. _Look, Clinton_ , she had said and pointed at the mess on the floor. _Look at all the badness I helped you get rid of_.

Clint spends a lot of time being scanned and tested, and a lot of time concentrating on finding something, _anything_ , remotely recognizable in print or speech. That kind of hyper-focus on something that essentially is white noise to him leaves his brain feeling wrung out and near-sighted after a while. There's no other way to describe it, he's tired enough that it's hard to keep track of things happening in the periphery. He spends quite some time in bed, with his eyes closed listening to Natasha talking. It still sounds like she's speaking some obscure language from some obscure part of the world, but the voice is hers. At least that's something to hold on to, and he actually reaches a level of cautious relaxation he hasn't managed for a very long.

Over the next few days the headaches recede a little, and he's allowed to leave the medical wing and return to his own apartment. Natasha becomes a fixture there. The nosebleeds, however, keep happening. He ruins at least one shirt every day, often two. The flow of blood is so unexpected and so heavy that even if he gets his hand to his face in a second it runs through his fingers and down his face. His bathroom looks like a crime scene after one of the more profuse bleeds. He's starting to feel lightheaded when he gets to his feet too quickly, and Bruce feeds him pills he assumes are iron supplements, along with red meat and broccoli at every meal. He ruins the carpet in his bedroom on day two, bleeds all over the couch the next day. Clint feels bad when he thinks of Tony's carpet and furniture cleaning bills.

Recognizing people's voice is such a relief. His brain still reacts to the slight dissonance of seeing unfamiliar faces coupled with such familiar voices, but it's so much easier to relax and let go of the obsessive compulsive vigilance than before. Trying to keep an eye and ear out for anything he recognizes is a bit like panning for gold. A whole lot of nothing passes between the little coveted nuggets, but they're _there_ , split-second flashes of familiar things. Sometimes he can find them again, but often they're gone as soon as he recognizes them, lost in the sea of meaningless input.

He hears Tony say 'going to' and then a few hours later 'asshole'.

He hears Bruce say 'heuristic'.

He hears the TV say 'partly cloudy' and 'Jersey'.

He hears JARVIS say 'Sir'

Natasha has never been one to talk just to hear her own voice, but she starts talking more and more to him. The increase is gradual. A few words at first, saying something as soon as she enters the room to let him know it's her, getting his attention when she wants him to choose what to eat, making sure he knows when she's leaving. He catches her watching him during the first few days, almost like she's gauging his reaction to it. When he doesn't tell her off, she starts sprinkling a few more words here and there while cooking or stretching or watching TV. Eventually she talks freely around him, but only when they're alone. As soon as she hears someone approaching she clams up, even if she's in the middle of a sentence. It happens several times, and Clint starts to wonder if this is another version of the post-its.

Natasha makes him grin when she reads from one of her books and does different voices, one slitheringly sleazy, and one with what sounds suspiciously like Fury's pitch and speech pattern. She reads from her magazines, too, and it seems she favors the various quizzes. Probably something along the lines of 'what supermodel is your style twin' or 'what personality type are you'. Not that he needs a quiz to know what his psych profile says. It's something like: mild to moderate paranoia coupled with a deep-rooted father complex and traits consistent with a sub-threshold fearful-avoidant attachment type. Add to that a light dash of sociopathy.

After reading up on what that all meant he had to grudgingly concede that there was a hint of truth to each of those labels. More to some, less to others.

At the other end of the couch, Natasha rattles through what he assumes are the multiple choice options for each question, and then she glances up at him before looking down and circling something with the pen in her hand. He watches her tally up the result and snicker. He wonders if she's filling out what she thinks he would answer. Wouldn't surprise him one bit.

'* '* '*

He really hopes that the nightmares will fade back into the background now that he's making at least some progress, but alas, they don't. Most nights are one long string of nightmare pearls. He predictably dreams of Loki again. He dreams of watching his first partner have the back of his head blown off. He dreams he watches Phil dying, dreams of killing Natasha (slowly, oh, so slowly). He dreams about Barney and of being held under water, of looking down and seeing his fingers gone, just bloody stumps where they're supposed to be.

Eleven days after the procedure Clint wakes as choking on his own blood, lying in a bloodstain that rivals the one he'd left behind in Islamabad when he'd been clipped by a piece of jagged metal flying by his ear. Falk had pressed him down onto a dirty mattress in an old, bombed out house and tried to stem the flow with the field dressing from Clint's gear, then had to use his own when it hadn't been enough. Clint presses his hand to his nose and tries to sit up, but he can't. The room swirls and moves around him, and he feels the blood slide down the back of his throat, warm and coppery, and shit, this is bad. This is real bad. He signals JARVIS, but he's not sure he manages to make his hand move the way it should. It feels stiff and heavy. Is this a stroke? Is it a delayed reaction to whatever they did to his brain?

JARVIS apparently did get the gist of his flailing hand gestures, because it's not long before Natasha and Steve appear next to his bed, helping him sit up. His muscles are calling it quits and he kind of sags against Steve when he positions himself behind Clint. His head lolls back, resting against Steve's shoulder, but he chokes on the blood again. He can see in the hard, flat look in Natasha's eyes that she's scared, and god, so is he. Cant


	12. Chapter 12

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Noth—

Clint's adrenaline levels suddenly shoot sky high, and he's falling, falling. He flails for something to grab, for something to stop the tumble, but he can't feel his hands, his arms, his legs, he gets no sensory input at all from his body. There's no up, no down. Warm and cold and light and dark have become concepts without meaning.

Weird shapes shift and snarl in the distance as he plummets. Movement within movement within movement, and suddenly everything is close, rushing at him with breathtaking speed. Clint flings his arms in front of his face, but he's not sure he even has arms, or a face to cover. The wall of things crashes into him without any physical force. It shatters silently into writhing pieces that form and break and reform, only to surge up at his face again. They buzz around him like angry wasps, and then he suddenly feels his body again. A terrible weight crashes down on him, and it squeezes and crushes him into shapes a human body was never meant to take. He thinks it should hurt, and maybe it does, maybe pain is kingfisher blue and maybe he's screaming. Maybe what he hears is his bones creaking and snapping.

The wasps turn into shards of glass around him, and they flash brightly before they charge again. This time they don't disintegrate harmlessly, they cut through his skin and sear their way deep into his brain where they pinball against neurons and axons before exploding out the back of his head, and he can't move, can't close his eyes. The cry that refuses to form in his mouth tastes like heat. He doesn't know what's happening, his memory is sand in the jagged water that surround him. He thinks maybe he is dead and this is what eternity looks like. What hell looks like.

He flinches at the low growl that makes the non-existent air shiver around him. It vibrates against his skin like low-grit sandpaper. The sound slowly dies down, but the vibrations continue, they rub and chafe at him until he's screaming, until he's nothing but a raw, bleeding mess, a bundle of exposed nerves. Cold blood drips into the churning water where it floats like oil, and this time there is no mistaking the pain. Not having a body at all is preferable to this, he thinks, and spends a lifetime struggling to move, to save his bones from being turned into gravel.

 _Hopeless_ , his brain whispers. _It's hopeless._

For a lifetime, for an eon, it is. Hopeless. Then something slowly starts to change. It's so gradual he's not sure it's real, but eventually the shapes around him start coalesce. The nightmarish void around him still keeps changing shape and focus, but the movements are slowing down. Direction and gravity start to mean something right around the time the reflected light off the wasps' sharp wings grows diffuse and muted until it's nothing more than soft embers wafting in the wind. They float to the ground and the glow curls like cigarette smoke, dissipating.

The pain cuts off like someone flicks a switch. The first thing Clint notices is that he has eyes. Because the light is hurting them. The second is that he has fingers and skin and he's gripping soft fabric tightly. He hears voices and sounds around him, but that's secondary to the fact that he has a body that isn't mangled and broken. He draws a deep, albeit a slightly wobbly, breath and feels his lungs expand behind his ribs. It's a beautiful sensation, and he does it again.

The room moves around him as he turns his head and blinks at the shapes that have turned into blurry people now. His eyes feel gritty and hot, and he lifts his hand to wipe at them. He feels so weak, but it's the familiar sensation of a body beyond exhaustion. Something twinges in the crook of his arm, and he looks down to see a taped down IV line, accompanied by a dark bruise under the skin that speaks of a blown vein. Several red puncture marks climb up the skin on the inside of his arm. Another one dots the back of his hand. He flexes his fingers slowly and tries to get a hold of all the pieces in his head that will give him an answer to why he's in a bed with an IV, but his brain feels like mush, and he can't remember. He tries to sit up, but he's too exhausted to get more than halfway before he gives up and sags back again. Someone touches his shoulder, and he squints up at the man in the white coat he knows has been by his side from the moment he opened his eyes, but that his brain had chosen to relegate to 'unimportant' until now.

He freezes as everything comes back to him. Shit. The Hydra gun. The months of hell. Tony's device. Waking with a mouth filling with blood and a body that wouldn't do what he told it to. His chest goes tight. Fuck. Did he have a stroke? For real this time? He pushes the doctor's hand away even as the man starts to speak, clearly catching on to the sudden change in Clint. The doctor speaks calmly and steadily, and even though it sounds nothing like words to Clint, he manages to convey a message of 'don't worry, everything is under control'.

It manages to take the worst edge of things, but Clint is far from reassured. Then the door opens and he sags back into the mattress with relief. Natasha gives him a quick onceover, then turns to the doctor and from the sound of things she is demanding answers. _Right fucking now, or prepare to face the consequences._ He almost smiles, yeah, because that's his girl. He blames his still foggy brain that it takes a few seconds to realize how monumental this moment is.

He's looking at Natasha. _Natasha_. Not a stranger.

Her eyes slide over him, and he sees the exact moment she catches on that something is different. She's across the floor and sitting down on the bed by his side. Without expression, she leans in and cradles his face in her hands. The grip is too tight to call gentle, but Clint doesn't care, he doesn't care about anything but the absolutely gorgeous woman in front of him who smells like Big Red, who can kill someone with such ease it makes something shiver inside Clint. The one who's as familiar to him as his own body.

She stares into his eyes like she's trying to look into his head, then she blinks and her eyes are suddenly glossy. Clint reaches up and pulls her down. With the way she's leaning over him, her balance is off, and she makes a sound that's a mix of a huff and a sob as she almost topples against him. He wraps his arms around her and holds on.

He recognizes Natasha, she's there, and she's Natasha, and, and, and his brain stalls out, overloaded by relief and gratitude and sheer fucking joy. "Natasha. God, Natasha, I missed you so much," he mumbles brokenly, and he feels an immediate change in her, a slight tensing of her body, and it sends a stab of fear through him.

She pushes up from where she's been all but lying across his chest, and looks down at him, her face carefully neutral again. Fuck. What's wrong now? What new, horrible aspect of this whole mess is presenting itself?

The room has gone silent, only a nurse at the back keeps rattling something off a clipboard, but she trails off when she realizes that everyone else has stopped talking. Clint sits up, too. The room floats around him for a moment before settling down.

"What? What's wrong?" He scans the room for some clue, but gets none. "Come on," he pleads, even though he knows they can't understand him. "You guys are freaking me out here." Natasha puts her hand on his arm and looks intently into his eyes again. She says something and her words are just as unintelligible as the doctor's. He tries to grin. "Sorry, Nat. Still haven't managed to learn Orcish." He feels sick to his stomach as he waits for whatever bad thing is happening to make itself known to him. What's going on? Whatwhatwhat?

She twists and says something to the doctor behind her, then turns back and pulls her phone. A few seconds later she turns it to Clint. There's an image on the small screen. An image of a movie monster. What the hell? He blinks at it stupidly for way too long. Then he realizes what kind of monster he's looking at. An Orc. She is showing him an image of an _Orc_.

He stares at her. "Do you—?" He cuts himself off, because he realizes that at the end of that question might be an answer he doesn't want. What if it's another false alarm? But that stubborn sliver of hope, the one that stays alive like a fucking cockroach no matter how much the universe tries to stomp it out, it's already raising its head. He licks his lips. "Can you understand me?" he asks cautiously.

She nods.

"Really?" He doesn't quite dare believe it. Not after this long. Not when every change this far has been for the worse.

She nods her head again. Emphatically.

"Clap your hands twice," he demands, still unconvinced.

She does. Jesus Christ, she _can_ understand him.

He sits up a little more. His heart is beating so hard it's almost painful. "Again."

 _Clap. Clap_.

"Snap your fingers."

 _Snap._

"Do the Macarena."

Natasha gives him a flat, five-second disgusted look before getting to her feet and proceeding to do the most static, most void-of-emotion Macarena the world has ever seen.

For a moment the people in the room look at her like she's grown another head, then Stark starts cackling with glee, and suddenly there are grins and smiles all over. There are quite a few dewy eyes in the room, but for once in what feels like a lifetime, Clint isn't the one bawling. He's buzzing with the giddy relief that growing and growing in him, and he thinks it's going to burst out of his skin any moment now. Even Stark looks a little weepy across the room. As soon as he sees Clint looking at him, he scowls and pretends there's something in his eye.

The morning passes in a blur. Recognizing people is amazing. He remembers the faces of the doctors and the nurses, even when they leave the room and return half an hour later. No more four-minute window to work with. And he soon discovers that voices are not the only thing he recognizes now. Letters. He recognizes the alphabet, all of it. Still can't decipher them when they're put together into words, but at least they're not just weird scratches. Numbers look like they should, too. Zero to nine. All of them. He loves numbers. Loves them.

He asks control questions now and again, just to makes sure he isn't imagining things, that they really can understand him. Is your name Anthony? Scowl, nod. Can you bring me orange juice? A glass with juice and a straw arrives. What number did I just say? Natasha shows one finger. The middle one. What's your thought on the color mauve? Tony pretends to put two fingers down his throat and gagging.

Clint gets a few hours reprieve before he's put through a battery of scans and examinations and tests that last pretty much the rest of the day. The sun is setting outside when he asks, I'm not dreaming, am I? He thinks that question might have come out a little more uncertain than he aimed for, because Natasha comes to sit by his side again. She shakes her head, her eyes very serious. 'Trust me. I wouldn't lie to you,' they tell him, and he believes her.

He's between tests, flipping through the magazine that someone had brought and enjoying the letters, the beautiful letters, when he suddenly remembers something. He asks for his phone. Twenty minutes later it's in his hand. He feels a little shaky as he opens the photo album. The first photo is of a bright orange koi fish he took in Baltimore a week before this all started. He swipes through a whole lot of more or less in-focus marine images before his finger stops in mid-air. Steve is smiling in the photo. He's wearing shades and a Baltimore Aquarium cap pulled down low over his face. But Clint knows him. He continues flipping through the photos until he gets to the Berlin series.

And there he is. There she is. There _they_ are, laughing into the camera. He slumps back against the raised head end of the bed and presses the phone against his chest with what he knows is a goofy grin.

The doctor shoos everyone out of the room when Clint starts to yawn. Everyone but Natasha, whom he doesn't even try to get to leave. Apparently they've already fought that battle, and Natasha came out on top. When they're alone, she lowers the overhead lights and digs out a ratty paperback from her bag. She kicks off her shoes and settles in the no doubt ridiculously expensive armchair in the corner. It's got Tony's metaphorical fingerprints all over it. Twisting, she reaches for the reading light behind her and switches it on.

"What are you reading?" he asks. "Can I see?"

She gets up, pads silently across the floor and hands him the book. 'Mo Hayder' is written in big, beautiful block letters at the top. 'The Devil of Nanking' in smaller font below. He hands it back. "I've read this. Kinda disturbing in places, but I liked it."

Natasha says something with a smirk.

"No, _you're_ disturbing," he replies, because there's no way she would pass up that. The smirk and the good-naturedly eye roll lets him know he guessed right.

Clint settles down under the covers and tries to wipe the sappy smile from his face, because God, this is embarrassing. He feels like he's _too_ happy, like he's a schmoopy character in one of those corny feel-good movies he can't stand. Life doesn't do feel-good. At least not the lives of people like them. He rolls to his side and slides his hand under his cheek. Natasha pulls her legs in under her and finds her place in the dog eared book.

The room settles into silence. He watches her through his lashes, and everything slows down, goes quiet and still in a way he hasn't truly experienced since all this started. The soft murmur of voices seeps through the door, but other than that there's nothing but the raspy sound of Natasha turning the page. He's tired, and he knows he won't be able to stave off sleep for very long, but he tries to keep his eyes from slipping shut. The reading light behind her catches in her hair and creates a glowing outline of her head that he's seen a hundred times in a variety of colors. Red. Gold. Chocolate. White blonde. Mousy brown. Black. Auburn. No matter what color or what persona she's wearing, she has always been Natasha. Beneath it all. Always Natasha. It's impossible to understand how he couldn't remember what she looked like just this morning.

His eyes grow heavier and heavier, but he resists stubbornly. He missed this. He missed _her_. Every now and again he catches her lifting her gaze from the book, and he thinks he's not the only one unwilling to let go of their re-established connection.

He's drifting off when his brain upends a bucket of ice water over him and he's suddenly certain that she'll be gone when he wakes up, that all of this is temporary. The slide back into the now-familiar grooves of what-ifs is instant. What if it's not real at all? What if it isn't Natasha at all? What if it's all some kind of mind-fuckery and it's all been some elaborate scheme to fool him into trusting someone who isn't who he thinks she is. Milking him for intel. No. He can't compromise anyone else, he _can't_.

He's out of bed on stumbly legs before his mind breaks out of the rising panic with the abruptness of a rubber band snapping. Over in the chair, Natasha has tensed up, but she hasn't moved. The floor is cold under his feet, his pulse loud in his ears. He stands frozen in the middle of the room, muscles trembling with tension. Jesus Christ. He tries to reason with his brain. Come on, Barton. JARVIS and Tony's security, remember? And besides, you're not that important. You have nothing worth that kind of hassle. And besides, genius, why would anyone spend this much time to get their hands on something that's already out there, available to anyone with enough encryption skills to crack the layers of security that still surrounds a lot of what Natasha put out there.

Natasha slowly uncurls and sets her feet on the floor. She puts the book down. Clint flexes his sweaty hands into fists a few times, shoulders high, not knowing what to do with the anxiety that once again prickles him. She leans forward a little, but doesn't get up. She says something quietly. His name probably. Or a question.

He holds up his hand, hoping she will stay in the chair and not come any closer. Not yet. "I'm fine," he says hoarsely. The rote reassurance falls flatly between them, and he knows the lie is pathetically obvious.

Natasha watches him intently for a few long seconds, then nods once and leans back against the backrest. Clint looks over his shoulder at the bed behind him, then back at Natasha, indecisive. He's being ridiculous and he should head back to bed and just sleep like a normal person, but he doesn't want to, he wants to make sure she's still who she claims to be, who she looks to be, and the familiar feeling is impossible to argue with, he needs that reassurance like he needs to breathe. He trusts her, he tries to remind himself. He _does_. He realizes suddenly that trust isn't the real issue here. Not his trust in her. The problem is that he doesn't trust himself.

With a frustrated groan he scrubs his knuckles into his eyes. Fucking Loki. After six years the experience can still make Clint second-guess himself, because there had been long stretches of time when he had believed Loki, had felt to the bottom of his soul that what he did was right, no doubt, no hesitation, everything was right in the world. Then there had been short moments of outright terror, when he realized what was going on, but he had still been unable to stop any of it. He sometimes wonders if Loki did that on purpose, allowed him to see the damage he wreaked just out of some sadistic desire to not just bend him to his will, but to break him. He folds his arms over his chest and shudders as he realizes how cold he is.

Natasha gets up and gives him a wide berth as she rounds him and goes to pick up the blanket that had landed in a heap on the floor as he scrambled out of bed. She holds it out, her eyes and body language neutral and friendly. He nods in thanks and takes it, but he still keeps his distance. Natasha returns to the chair and her book. The blanket is soft and warm, and he wraps it around himself before sitting down on the edge of the bed. He wants so badly to go back to that floaty, euphoric cloud he was on earlier, but it's out of reach, blocked by the thought that it might not be real.

He sits there for a long time. There are no voices in the corridors outside, and he thinks he maybe slept for quite a while before waking up. Didn't feel like it, felt like a few minutes, but as Natasha had put her book down, he had seen that she had been close to the end.

"What did I forget in London that time you belted me across the face and accused me of cheating?" He tries to make it sound casual, but knows it doesn't fool Natasha for one second. "You know the time I'm talking about, right?" he presses. "When we got out just as Zoric's guys showed up?" He rubs at his cheek with a strained grin, trying to diffuse the tension that has suddenly settled over the room. "You sure played your role as a scorned woman to the fullest."

When he looks up, there's a worried tilt to Natasha's brow.

"It's okay," he tells her quickly. "I still recognize you, I just…" He makes a face. "I'm sorry, Nat, but... Please," he pleads. "Just humor me."

She watches him for a long few seconds, then nods. She reaches for her phone and taps at it for a minute. She pauses, scowls down at the screen then taps some more, before getting to her feet and handing him the phone. He looks at the picture of an old handheld Nintendo game. It's not the Donkey Kong he had picked up at that skeevy market for four quids right in front of a very agitated collector who had been fifteen seconds too late, but it's close enough and he can breathe again.

"There's something I must tell you," he says when he is reasonably sure the words won't wobble too much.

She nods for him to go on. There's still cautious worry in her eyes.

"I have a new best friend."

One eyebrow goes high.

He hands the phone back. "Her name is Google. She's amazing." He grins at her, and gets a 'you're an idiot' head-shake in return, but she's smiling, too. "Sorry," he says sheepishly when the worst edge of giddiness settles and he feels bad and embarrassed again for making her prove herself. "Brain's just…" he makes a vague gesture at his head, then looks away. "I'm just fucked up."

She nods slowly, seriously, like he just said something profound, then returns to the chair. He thinks she's going to get back to her book, but she returns with a deck of cards in her hand. She holds it up in question. Clint's answer is to scoot back onto the bed and makes place for her.

"Sorry," he says again, but she ignores him.

'* '* '*

He's stuck in Medical for three days. Three days of endless tests and examinations and scans. He has a few more freak outs, mainly at night, but he is able to talk himself out of them without going into full-scale panic again.

The day after he is discharged Clint ventures down to the common floor all on his own.

Woo-hoo, his brain snorts as he's waiting for the elevator. Life on the edge!

Clint tells it to kindly shut the fuck up, because last time he was alone in this very elevator it hadn't ended well. What a doozy of a freak out that had been. He thinks it might actually be one of the worst he's ever had – and he's has quite a few of them over the years. He taps his fingers against his thighs and without volition his eyes find the spot where blood had been smeared on the floor. He feels sorry for whoever they were, the two who had tried to help him. He still thinks Steve was one of them. He doesn't know why, it's not like he recognized anything about him.

This time the smooth elevator ride goes well. He's heading down because he wants to test the waters and figure out if he's still as jumpy around the guys as before. He doesn't think so, he doesn't feel quite as skittish, and it had been okay when they had visited him in Medical, but he wants to know for sure. Maybe he'd been too blissed out to notice.

It's late-ish, but when he walks into the kitchen, Bruce and Tony are there. Clint takes careful inventory of his own reactions, but is relieved that he doesn't feel the creeping urge to get out of there immediately.

He gives a small wave. "Guys," he says in super casual greeting and heads to the well-stocked fridge. He pulls out a juice carton. The label says Tropicana Sanguinello. Sanguinello. He's had a few days to get used to being able to read again, but it's still a thrill that he doesn't have to try to figure out what something is just from the box.

As he turns, Tony is moving in on him. Clint takes a step backwards and the the edge of the counter digs into his hip, because the man is grinning in a way that usually means that something is about to go boom. Very loudly. But Tony just hooks an around Clint's neck and pulls him into a half-assed hug. He holds up his phone and snaps a selfie of the two of them. Clint gives a pretend scowl, just because, and pushes him away. Tony stumbles and laughs, but he is already tapping out a message on his phone.

There's a 'pling' from Bruce's pocket.

Clint rolls his eyes. "Seriously? He's right here. He can see me."

Tony says something, and the tone is teasing and lightly condescending and so damn Tony that Clint almost loses it right there. He busies himself with pouring the juice while he composes himself.

Steve shows up a few minutes later, huffing just a little, and Clint wonders if he jogged up the stairs. The warm handshake he extends to Clint somehow merges into another hug, and Clint feels his face heat up a little. But when Steve steps back, he looks just as happy as he had when Clint had woken up and recognized them, so Clint doesn't mind too much.

Bruce gets up and starts pulling a couple of things out of the refrigerator.

"You cooking?" Clint asks and Bruce nods. "Do you, um, do you want help?"

Bruce's smile is so wide Clint feels a little embarrassed again, but Bruce just hands him a bunch of carrots and a peeler and points to the counter.

Pasta with chicken. Just the four of them. Clint. Tony. Bruce. Steve. It's a bit quiet, and Clint has to remind them a few times that he still can't understand shit, but it's okay to talk, it doesn't hurt his ears and head the way it did. The dinner is nice. Clint gets a little antsy after an hour or so, but it's not a big thing. He stays through the meal and even helps Bruce load the dishes into the dishwasher before heading back to his place.


	13. Chapter 13

Honestly, it's kinda anti-climactic the way it ends.

If you don't count the way Clint collapses in mid-step on the street and almost crushes one of those yappy little socialite dogs.

He comes around to an aching head (this is getting so old, he thinks foggily) and movement that echoes the falling sensation he'd woken up to after his last episode. Blinking he tries to bring the world into focus, and after a few seconds he is partially successful. He realizes the flashing lights he's seeing are those of an ambulance and the movement he feels is him being loaded into the back of it. The gurney locks into place with a jolt, and he groans as the dull pain in his head intensifies. He brings an unsteady hand to his forehead. His fingertips come away bloody. What the hell now?

Through the open door of the ambulance he spots Natasha on the sidewalk, holding her phone pressed to her ear. She looks as calm as ever, but he sees how her fingers grip the phone just a little tighter than normal.

"Natasha," he says, but his voice comes out scratchy and she doesn't hear him.

He struggles to sit up. He needs to tell her he's fine, that she doesn't have to worry. He's okay. One of the EMTs tell Natasha that there's no room in the ambulance, that she's going to have to make her own way to the hospital. Clint's clumsy fingers find the buckles to the straps that secure him. Nope. No way. He's not going without her. He's fine, anyway, he just needs to go home to rest, and maybe he can get a ride with Natasha. His fingers slip on the stubborn buckles. Come on, just release you fuckers.

"Clint. Take it easy. You're okay," he hears her say. "I really think I should go with him," she continues a moment later. Clint opens his mouth to ask 'with who?' but Natasha continues before he can get the word out. "He's a veteran. Afghanistan. He's been struggling with PTSD for a long time, and there's a risk he might become agitated if he finds himself in an environment he doesn't recognize, surrounded by people he doesn't know. Especially now that he's confused and hurting." Clint realizes she's talking to the EMT.

"I'm okay," he mumbles, but they both ignore him.

The PTSD story gets Natasha a ticket to ride, so Clint decides he'll stay put for the time being. He closes his eyes as the other EMT presses a bandage against his forehead and guides his hand up to keep it there. The ambulance dips a fraction, and a moment later he hears Natasha settle down on the seat by his head.

"I'm okay," he tries again. Because he is, he just… He blinks. He just what? He realizes he doesn't know what happened. He tries to think back, but the last thing he remembers is trying to decide if he wanted black coffee or juice at the breakfast place he and Natasha had walked to. He lifts the bandage and squints at the blood, before prodding at his forehead with a finger. Ouch. A warm trickle runs down towards his eyes, and without looking up from her phone, Natasha reaches out and guides his hand with the bandage back to his forehead. She keeps holds it in place as she squeezes the phone between her shoulder and her cheek.

"Stark," she says after a few seconds. "Alert your staff. We're coming in hot with Barton."

Clint hears Tony say something on the other side.

"He had a seizure."

Wait, what?

Clint pushes her hand away and cranes his neck to get a better view of her. "Seizure? I didn't have a seizure," he mumbles. Then he blinks and replays Natasha's words in his head. Replays _all_ the words he has heard her say since he came to. "Also, I can understand you," he tells her stupidly.

Natasha cuts the call with Tony without a word and the two of them stare at each other.

"Well, whaddaya know," she finally says. "Cognitive recalibration 2.0."

"Please tell me you didn't—"

"Nope." She grins. "Can't take the credit for this. This one was all you." She turns to the EMT who had tried to stop her from riding along. "Stark Mid-Town Medical Center."

"This isn't a taxi," he tells her, clearly annoyed at having her in his space. "We're going to Lower Manhattan."

"If you say so." She picks up her phone again and starts tapping away at it.

Two minutes later the driver informs the EMT in the back that there has been a change in orders and they're going to Stark Mid-Town.

Natasha gives the scowling guy a blithe smile.

'* '* '*

Yes. Clint actually did have a seizure. A proper grand mal seizure that scared the hell out of everyone around him, and fifteen minutes later he's back in the neuro ward again. Hello, scanners of every kind. Did you miss me?

He sleeps for most of it, tired like nothing he's ever experienced before. Reaction to the seizure, he's told. He's not surprised when later that night the doctors come back to tell him they've found nothing abnormal in his scans, nothing in his blood works. The only thing noticeable is that he now understands people.

They keep him for two days, then he's cleared to go home. Take it easy. Rest. Tell someone immediately if you start feeling faint or strange in any way. All he feels is sore and headachy, but that's probably from bouncing his head off the sidewalk, so he doesn't worry too much.

Banner and a team of researchers are still trying to understand the finer points of the ray gun technology and the neural mechanisms that made Clint's brain flip out for those few months, but in the grand scale of things, he's cured. It's not without hiccups, because the wrong word occasionally comes out of his mouth, or he hears something other than what's actually being said, and when he realizes it he invariably goes into a bit of a tailspin. All he can think those times is 'what if it's starting again?' What if he loses everything and everyone (Natasha) again?

Reclaiming his independence is stupidly hard. His brain is still adjusting, so it sometimes still reacts to voices like they're painful, before actually processing them and realizing that no, they're not. Taking Bouncy (whose name is actually Pharaoh, but who goes by Tut) out for a walk on his own is a major milestone. Tut, Clint finds out, is a recently retired army K-9, with an equally recently retired handler who lives in Queens. Lowry is an old contact of Natasha's, and he doesn't mind letting Clint borrow Tut now and again.

It gets easier as time goes on. The remaining low-level anxiety mostly fades, and even though he's still off active duty, Clint goes back to HQ as a challenge for himself. He spends a few hours at the range, renewing his firearm qualification, then sits in the huge cafeteria with a large cup of bad coffee and a muffin. It's fine. He's mostly bored.

He and Natasha don't spend quite as much time together these days, and while he's thrilled that solitude isn't freaking him out, he kinda misses it. But he's fine. It's fine. She deserves her space, so he leaves it mostly to her to initiate time together. And besides, it's not like she has abandoned him completely, she still checks up on him now and again, knocks on the door and spends some time with him before disappearing again. Clint is satisfied with what she's willing to give him. He never finds any of her post-it notes.

Life slowly goes back to normal.

'* '* '*

Four months down the line, the two of them are in Sudan.

Sudan, Texas, population 1,039, and proud host of the annual Deep Creek Fall Rodeo.

They have just finished an exhausting and messy job in Medellin, and Clint had been the one to suggest the lone star state for a couple of days of R&R. Natasha had shrugged and said why not. She had probably been expecting Dallas or Austin or something with a city beat, not some dusty little town way out in the boonies. But she had been a champ about it, simply demanded that they stop at a store on the way for her to get some more appropriate clothes when she heard where they were going and what they were doing.

More appropriate clothes apparently means cowboy boots, a white cowboy hat, and faded jeans so tight Daisy Duke would have been jealous. To that she picked up a fitted blue button down shirt, open to show plenty of cleavage. The icing on the cake is an overly large belt buckle with an embossed longhorn motif. Heavy earrings jangle from her ears. She should look ridiculous, but she doesn't. She looks every bit like she belongs in the throng of people that has flocked to outskirts of the little town. She had turned on her Texan dialect as soon as she walked out of the store, laying it on thicker than he has ever heard, and she looks like she's enjoying herself immensely. He wonders if it's part of the act, because Natasha is usually much more conservative in what she chooses to show. He hopes at least part of it is real, because Clint loves it, and he wants her to love it, too.

While Natasha is immersing herself in her chosen role, Clint's only concession to Texas is the Texas State University t-shirt she had tossed at him as she got back in the car. He can fake the dialect well enough, but he just wants to relax, so he opts to play the mid-western visitor come to get the true Texas experience.

Sudan is tiny and dusty and hot as hell, but Clint enjoys every second of it. He enjoys the livestock show, the petting zoo for the kids, the hot dogs and oversized slushies that color his tongue electric blue. It all reminds him a little of Carson's. Which he _so_ doesn't miss, but which he sometimes kinda does. It hadn't all been bad. There had been good times, too. Good people. Kind people.

Natasha must sense his thoughts drifting in the wrong direction, because she bumps her arm into his lightly. "How ya doin' there, Rodney," she asks, stretching and curling the warm vowels in all the right places.

He rolls his eyes at the name she chose for him. "Just fine, _Billie Mae_." He takes a sip of his slushie. "Where are the cowboys? I want to see idiots get thrown off horses and bulls."

"I'll have you know," she says and brushes her bleached blonde hair over her shoulder, "that rodeo is an art form, a show of strength and horsemanship acquired and honed over many years."

"And bullmanship." He points the bendy straw at her. "Don't forget bullmanship."

Billie Mae gives a pearly laugh. "Let's not," she agrees.

They keep walking, and not one minutes later, Clint hears loud apologizing behind them and turns. A man in his twenties apparently walked right into a woman laden with soda cans and a paper plate filled with hot dogs. The guy helps her to her feet and continues to apologize as he starts collecting the soda cans that have rolled away. When he glances over his shoulder towards the two of them, Clint sees Natasha wink saucily at him and realizes what must have happened.

"Billie Mae Watson, you are a walking health hazard," he chides with a laugh.

She bats her eyelashes at him. "Why thank you," she purrs and slips her arm under his.

A crowd is gathered around the little fenced-in arena. The closer they get, the more the air smells like sawdust, animals and cloying cotton candy, and Clint gets a twinge of stupid melancholy again. He busies himself with the show program someone had handed to him as they arrived. It's in black and white, printed on someone's home printer from the look of it.

"One of the clowns name is Will the Wild Thang," he says, just to have something to say.

"I knew a rodeo clown once," Billie Mae says. "Alfie. Dumb as a Cantaloupe, poor baby, but an absolute darling. He used to help me around the house and in exchange I would cook for him. He liked my baking."

Clint snorts. "Yeah, I bet Alfie loved to butter your biscuits."

They weave their way through the small crowd and eventually find a spot where no Stetsons or beehives of teased hair block the view. Midday had transitioned into afternoon even before they arrived, and the rodeo is in full swing already. Clint cheers along with the rest of the crowd as one of the riders manages the required eight seconds. Another rider lasts exactly three point six seconds, but the guy rolls easily as he hits the ground and is on his feet instantly. He doesn't seem too bummed out, because he turns to the bleachers at the opposite end of the arena and takes a deep bow, sweeping his hat in a wide arc with a large grin. He throws kisses to a couple of young women in the crowd before climbing over the fence and letting the next rider take the stage.

Clint has finished his supersized slushie and is looking around, trying to find somewhere to dispose of the empty Styrofoam cup when she nudges him with her hip.

"Hey."

"Yeah?"

"Back then, what were you telling me?"

He glances at her. It's Billie Mae who's looking at him, but the question is all Natasha. He knew she wouldn't let it just go, so he has been expecting this. Dreaded this. He thinks of all the things he's too chicken to say out loud now, all the things he wishes she just _knew_ , without having to put words to them.

"Eh, you know," he says. "Just running my mouth to keep boredom at bay." He bumps her shoulder. "What about you? Your notes and post-its? Was it your life's deepest secrets? Or a passed-down-through-the-generations family recipe for four-meat chili, divided into twenty-two brightly colored parts?"

She turns her eyes back to the contestants and the arena. "Most were about you, actually." The crowd cheers and Billie Mae claps her hands enthusiastically as another rider manages to stay hold on for eight seconds.

Clint hides his surprise by taking a sip of his slushie, forgetting there's nothing left. The straw slurps loudly. "Was it about how awesome I am?" he smirks. "And how much you luv me and would miss my witty banter if I never got better?" He offers it up as an out, a shortcut back to their regularly scheduled _safe_ banter where Natasha says something cutting and Clint plays at being all hurt.

She doesn't take it.

"Yes," she says instead, and it's so honest Clint doesn't know what to say for a while. He knows she cares about him, but it's a rare thing that it's not expressed in the form of sharp-edged teasing or underhandedly considerate actions.

Billie Mae leans against his side and looks up at him coyly. "So, tell me, handsome," she asks. "How much did you miss _me_?"

 _So fucking much it hurts to think about._ "Not quite as much as I missed my gun, but almost," he says lightly. It's noisy enough around them that he doesn't have to worry about anyone overhearing.

She laughs. "Honey, you sure know how to sweet talk a girl. But if I'm next in line after your beloved gun, I guess I should be honored."

The speaker rattles through results from earlier and squeezes in some commercial announcements as they get ready for the bulls.

"Actually," he says on impulse. "That's a lie."

Billie Mae gives him a mock-wounded look. "What? I'm behind your knives, too?"

"I missed you way more than my gun. I missed you more than my bow."

In the corner of his eye he can see her watching him for a beat, then she insinuates her arm under his again. "I'm glad you're back," she says quietly. The dialect is gone, and when he looks down at her, so is the 100-watt Colgate smile, the pouty lips, all of it, the entire act is gone. This is all her. His Natasha.

He almost shivers when she runs her fingertips lightly down the inside of his wrist, across the palm of his hand and laces them with his, using her body to careful to shield the action from anyone watching. It's nothing they haven't done before, under cover posing as a couple, or when one of them needs comfort or grounding, but the touch feels different this time. Like maybe it means something more. But he's not about to push his luck, so he just squeezes her fingers lightly for a moment, then turns his attention back to the spectacle in front of them.

They watch the ring be cleaned up and the next rider explodes out of the chute. The bull dispatches the rider less than three seconds, and they watch the rodeo clown distract the animal enough for the dazed young cowboy to climb over the fence to safety. Calves are roped, barrels are rounded at breakneck speed. Between the goat tying and the intermission show that consists of a high school marching band showing off, Natasha pulls her hand out of his and he has a second to mourn it before she slides it into one of the back pockets of his jeans. For a moment he's sure it's Billie Mae by his side again, but then she cants her head to look at him and it's Natasha still. He hesitates, then drapes his arm over her shoulders.

He turns his eyes back to the ring and the bronco that's doing its best to get rid of the rider who is holding on for dear life. They can do this here, he thinks. Hidden in the middle of a crowd of strangers they can play at being normal people for a little while, they can try this terribly fragile thing out. Maybe it's a one-time thing they both need after all that went down, maybe it's wishful thinking, he doesn't know. What he does know is that unless he wants to be absolutely sure this never happens again, Natasha needs to be the one to show the way.

At the end there's a prize ceremony. Someone gets an ugly belt buckle and some kind of trophy. There's an oversized check involved. There are prizes for juniors and seniors and rodeo queens and kings. Will the Wild Thang gets some sort of award, too. Clint think it looks like one of the Best In Show ribbons that dogs get.

They follow the stream of people leaving, but stop for another hotdog before heading back to the car parked on the side of the road a good stroll away. Billie Mae has returned in full force, sprouting increasingly ridiculous Texan sayings as they walk, effortlessly weaving them into her narrative. She's good at being someone else. Probably better, he thinks, than being herself. But he's glad she is who she is. He still wakes up some nights, sweaty and certain beyond reasoning that it's happening again, that he can't understand or recognize anyone. He doesn't know how many times he has dialed her number in the middle of the night just to hear her voice. She never complains, she just talks him down then stays silently on the line until the knot inside loosens enough for him to let her go.

Billie Mae gestures as she talks about her great grandpa in Cayote, who apparently sold his farm back in twenty-four, and found out they struck oil on the property two months later. Just about killed the poor man. By the car she pulls the door open and tosses the cowboy hat into the backseat. When she straightens up again, it's Natasha looking back at him. She gives him a smile and leans her arms on the roof of the car. Her fingers are heavy with cheap, flashy rings that catch the setting sun in their facets. He's pretty sure at least one of them came from a one-dollar toy capsule machine.

"Kanye West called," he tells her. "Said he wanted his bling-back back."

"Suck it, Barton." She splays her fingers against the setting sun and pretends to admire the jewelry. "This is the epitome of style."

"Uh-huh."

"Says the man who thinks putting on socks is dressing up."

"Socks are the work of the devil. The bible says so."

"I must have missed that part."

He grins. "Most people do." A sharp bang makes both of them turn and look, but it's just a couple of boys playing with firecrackers. Clint rests his elbow on the roof of the car and twists, watching the boys as they huddle together behind one of the many parked trailers that transported animals to Sudan for the show. A few seconds later the boys sprint away to a safe distance. Another firecracker explodes.

"This was fun," he says.

"It was okay," she shrugs, but she's smiling as she says it.

One of the boys checks the surroundings furtively, then he's scaling the back of a dusty trailer with three stylized horse heads painted on it. He manages to find a hold and stuffs what Clint assumes is a firecracker into a crack between the rear-doors. There's a flicker of a lighter and then he jumps. When the small explosion comes, he's already hiding behind the next trailer along with his brothers in crime.

Clint thinks about Natasha's hand in his pocket, about the warmth of her body pressed against his side.

"Maybe we could do it again sometime?" he says.

He means for it to be casual, means to give her the option to interpret it as just an offer of going to another rodeo at some point, to play dress up and have a good time if that's what she wants, but it comes out too careful, too hesitant.

When the silence grows too long, he makes himself look at her. Her eyes have become closed off and unreadable. They look at each other across the roof of the car for a moment, then she stands up straight and busies herself with pulling a hairband from her pocket. Clint sighs softly and lets his forehead fall against his folded arms. Why can't he just leave well enough alone, why does he always have to nudge and push?

Natasha squints at the setting sun as she winds the hairband around her hair in quick, practiced movements to pull it up in a loose bun. She won't look at him now and yep, you blew it, Barton. With another sigh, he gets into the driver seat. The interior of the car is still hot from hours of baking in the Texas sun and the back of Clint's t-shirt sticks uncomfortably to the seat. He presses the ignition and turns the fans up to max. The radio comes to life with a female voice burbling the same kind of high-gloss enthusiasm that Billie Mae had displayed. He turns it down and waits as Natasha slides in next to him and buckles up. He spends the time it takes to reach the highway contemplating damage control strategies.

They've been on the road for ten silent and heavy minutes, when she speaks.

"Barton?"

He glances over. "Yeah?"

She is looking straight ahead, eyes firmly settled on the car ahead of them. "Yes."

"Sorry?"

"Yes, I think I would like to do this again."

"Oh. Uh, okay."

Before he gets a chance to say anything else, she pulls her oversized shades down from their perch on her head and turns the radio back up. She leans her elbow against the side window and props her chin up, head turned a fraction away. The message is clear: This topic has been closed for now. Conversation is over. Period. Full stop.

But 'for now' doesn't mean 'forever', and Clint can work with that. He smiles. He can totally work with that.


End file.
